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DAVID A. DE ARMOND 

( Late a Representative from Missouri) 

MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF 

REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATE 

OF THE UNITED STATES 

SIXTY-FIRST CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 



f 



Proceedings in the House Proceedings in the Senate 

April 9, 1910 May 21, 1910 



COMPILED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON PRINTING 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1911 



7)2 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 






Pago. 

Proceedings in the House 5 

Prayer by Rev. Henry N. Couden, D. D 5 

Memorial addresses by — 

Mr. Dickinson, of Missouri 10 

Mr. Jones, of Virginia 18 

Mr. Parker', of New Jersey 31 

Mr. Alexander, of New York 34 

Mr. Bartholdt, of Missouri 41 

Mr. Lloyd, of Missouri 43 

Mr. Booher, of Missouri . 47 

Mr. Parsons, of New York 4!) 

Mr. Henry W. Palmer, of Pennsylvania 51 

Mr. Hammond, of Minnesota 53 

Mr. Rucker, of Missouri 55 

Mr. Reid, of Arkansas 58 

Mr. Hamlin, of Missouri 63 

Mr. Alexander, of Missouri 67 

Mr. Small, of North Carolina 74 

Mr. Murphy, of Missouri 78 

Mr. Sulzer, of New York 79 

Mr. Cullop, of Indiana 83 

Mr. Clark, of Missouri 87 

Mr. Calderhead, of Kansas 94 

Mr. Borland, of Missouri 97 

Mr. Morgan, of Missouri 102 

Mr. Brantley, of Georgia 105 

Proceedings in the Senate 112 

Prayer by Rev. Ulysses G. B. Pierce, D. D 113 

Memorial addresses by — 

Mr. Stone, of Missouri 116 

Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa 121 

< Mr. Curtis, of Kansas 129 

Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 131 

Mr. Smith, of Michigan 135 

Mr. Shively, of Indiana 137 

Mr. Carter, of Montana 140 

Mr. Warner, of Missouri 1 17 

[3] 



DEATH OF HON. DAVID ALBAUGH DE ARMOND 



Proceedings in the House 

Monday, December 6, 1009. 

The following prayer was offered by the chaplain, Rev. 
Henry N. Couden, D. D. : 

Our Father in Heaven, conscious of our dependence 
both as individuals and as a nation upon Thee, moment 
by moment, hour by hour, as the years come and go, we 
draw near to Thee in the sacred attitude of prayer, seek- 
ing light to guide and strength to sustain us in every legiti- 
mate purpose, to grow our Republic in all that makes a 
nation great and glorious. Impress, we beseech Thee, 
every citizen throughout the length and breadth of our 
land with the great responsibility resting upon him for 
the moral character and stability of our Union, that each 
may vie with each in a faithful and patriotic service to 
his country. Inspire the Members of the Sixty-first Con- 
gress, now convened in regular session, with high resolves 
and noble purposes, that its legislative acts may be in con- 
sonance with the laws which Thou hast ordained. Let 
Thy blessing come in full measure upon the Speaker of 
this House, that in the manifold duties and obligations 
devolving upon him he may be guided by the highest con- 
ception of right and truth and justice. Re graciously 
near to the President of these United States and his 
advisers. Protect him and them from personal violence 
and from the machinations of designing men. Imbue 

[5] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 



him plenteously with wisdom from above, that he may 
execute the laws of the land with justice and equity and 
adjust all national and international questions so that 
they may redound to the good of the people and glory of 
Thy holy name. Quicken the minds and the hearts of 
the judiciary throughout our land, that their judgments 
may be true and righteous altogether. Keep us in peace 
and harmony among ourselves and with all nations. 

And now, Father, profoundly moved by the recent 
tragic and pathetic death of one of the most distinguished 
Members of this House, who for years has been conspicu- 
ous in the affairs of his State and Nation, we most fer- 
vently pray for that consolation which Thou alone canst 
give to his colleagues, friends, and especially the stricken 
wife and children; and grant, most merciful Father, 
that we may all look forward with bright anticipations 
to a reunion with our loved ones in a realm where sor- 
rows never come, and paeans of praise we will ever give to 
Thee in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 

The Speaker. The Clerk will call the roll by States to 
ascertain the presence of a quorum. 

Mr. Clark, of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, it becomes my 
painful duty to announce to the House the death of Judge 
David Albaugh De Armond, late a Representative from 
Missouri. 

In the early hours of November 23 he died so suddenly 
and under such tragic circumstances as to shock the 
entire country. 

For 19 years he was one of the ablest and most dis- 
tinguished Members of this body. His sad death will 
form one of the most pathetic chapters in the history 
of Congress. 

At some subsequent time we will ask the House to 
set apart a day when Members may pay tribute to his 
memory. 

[6] 



Proceedings in the House 



I now oner the following resolutions, and move their 
adoption. 
The Speaker. The Clerk will report the resolutions. 
The Clerk read as follows : 

House resolution 1 in 

Resolved, That the House of Representatives has heard with pro- 
found sorrow of the death of the Hon. David Albaugh De Armond, 
late a Member of the House from the State of Missouri. 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the 
Senate and send a copy thereof to the family of the deceased. 

The resolutions were agreed to. 

ADJOURNMENT 

The Speaker. The Clerk will report the additional reso- 
lution. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

Resolved, That' as a further mark of respect to the memory of 
the Hon. Francis Rives Lassiter and the Hon. David Albaugh De 
Armond the House do now adjourn. 

The resolution was agreed to. 

Accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 40 minutes p. m.) the 
House adjourned. 

March 4, 1910. 

The House met at 12 o'clock noon. 

Mr. Clark, of Missouri. I ask unanimous consent that 
Saturday, April 9, beginning at 2 o'clock p. m., be set 
apart for eulogies on the late Judge De Armond. 

The Speaker. The gentleman from Missouri asks unani- 
mous consent that Saturday, April 9, after 2 o'clock, be 
set apart for eulogies upon the late Representative De 
Armond. Is there objection? 

There was no objection. 



[7] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armoxd 

Saturday, April 9, 1910. 

The House met at 12 o'clock noon. 

The Chaplain, Rev. Henry N. Couden, D. D., offered the 
following prayer : 

God of righteousness, justice, and mercy, in whose 
fatherly love are centered all our longings, hopes, and 
aspirations, we thank Thee for the spirit of the Christian 
religion which sets a premium on the manly virtues and 
inspires to nobility of soul in an unselfish and useful life. 
We thank Thee for the custom which prevails in the 
congressional family in recounting the virtues of those 
who have served with them and have passed on to the 
life beyond; that to-day, in a special service, they will 
recall the life and deeds of one who for many years served 
his State and Nation with untiring energy and patriotic 
devotion. When he spoke, it was always to a high pur- 
pose; when he acted, it was for his country's good. His 
death, extremely tragic and pathetic, moved every heart 
in deepest sympathy for his bereaved family. 

Grant, O most merciful Father, that his untimely death 
may teach us the uncertainty of this life and awaken in 
us a desire to do our work faithfully and conscientiously. 

Be Thou very near to those who were bound to him in 
the tender ties of kinship and help them to look forward 
with bright anticipations to a realm where they shall be 
united in the bonds of love forever, through Jesus Christ, 
our Lord. Amen. 

Mr. Clark, of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, I offer the follow- 
ing resolutions and ask that they be read. 

The Speaker. The gentleman from Missouri offers the 
resolutions which the Clerk will report. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

House resolution 580 
Resolved, That the business of the House be now suspended, 
that opportunity may be given for tributes to the memory of 

[8] 



Proceedings in the House 



Hon. David Albaugh Dk Abmond, late a Member of this House 
from the State of Missouri. 

Resolved, That as a particular mark of respect to the memory 
of the deceased, and in recognition of his distinguished public 
career, the House at the conclusion of these exercises shall stand 
adjourned. 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the 
Senate. 

Resolved, That the Clerk send a copy of these resolutions to 
the family of the deceased. 

The resolutions were unanimously agreed to. 

Mr. Clark, of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, before speeches 
begin I ask unanimous consent that anyone who so desires 
may print remarks in the Record for 10 congressional 
days. 

The Speaker. Is there objection? [After a pause.] The 
Chair hears none. The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. 
Morgan] will take the chair. 



[9] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 



Address of Mr. Dickinson, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: I rise for the purpose of paying a brief 
and humble tribute to the memory of my distinguished 
predecessor, who for nearly 19 years represented in this 
great legislative body the sixth congressional district 
of Missouri, with honor and with marked ability and 
distinction. 

David Albaugh De Armond was born in Rlair County, 
Pa., on the 18th day of March, 1844. He was the oldest 
of a family of 6 children. His father, James De Armond, 
was born in Northumberland County, Pa., in the year 
1790, and died at Greenfield, Mo., at the advanced age of 
95 years. His grandfather, Michael De Armond, was a 
soldier of the Revolutionary Army, serving under Wash- 
ington at Valley Forge and taking part in battles of the 
Revolution. James De Armond, the father, married 
Catherine Albaugh, the youngest of a family of 13 chil- 
dren. Her parents were Marylanders, and settled in Blair 
Count}', Pa., at an early day. She was born in the year 
1815 and died in the year 1904 at the home of her son 
David, at Butler, Mo., at the ripe old age of 89 years. 

David A. De Armond spent his childhood and earl}' man- 
hood on a hilly, rocky farm at the foot of the Allegheny 
Mountains, not far from the source of the Juniata River, 
and on this farm his parents lived until 1866, when they 
removed to Davenport, Iowa. His early advantages were 

[10] 



Address of Mr. Dickinson, of Missouri 

few and meager. His parents were in no sense educated, 
but were of sterling worth. He was educated in the com- 
mon and high schools of his county and at Dickinson 
Seminary, at Williamsport, Pa., graduating therefrom in 
the year 1866. Prior to entering this institution he taught 
school for several years. Upon graduating he joined his 
parents at their home in Davenport, Iowa. He chose the 
law as his profession, read law in the office of Lane & Day, 
and was admitted to practice in 1867, at Davenport, where 
lie then resided, and where he continued to reside for 
about two years thereafter, when he started out to find 
a place to locate and finally settled in the town of Green- 
field, in the county of Dade, in the Ozark regions of 
southwest Missouri, where he practiced law, married, and 
continued to live until the year 1883. 

While living in Greenfield he was ifominated in the 
year 1878 for the State senate by the Democratic Party 
of that district; and though the district was Republican 
in politics, he was elected and served in the Missouri State 
Senate for a period of four years. As State senator he 
quickly took high rank and gained State-wide reputation 
as an honest, capable, and fearless legislator. In the year 
1883 he moved to Bates County, first to Rich Hill, then to 
Butler, the county seat, where he continued to reside until 
his death. In 1884 he was Democratic presidential elector 
and voted for Grover Cleveland for President. He was a 
successful lawyer and practitioner in all the courts of Mis- 
souri. In 1885 he was appointed to membership on the 
Missouri supreme court commission, authorized by the 
legislature to relieve the court and to aid in clearing its 
overburdened docket, and as such commissioner he wrote 
a number of opinions which took high rank among the 
decisions of the supreme court of that State. 

In the year 1886 James B. Gantt, the circuit judge of 
the district of which Bates County was a part, not being 

[11] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

a candidate for reelection, it became necessary to choose 
a successor, and the eyes of the district naturally turned 
to De Armond. All other candidates withdrew from the 
race, it being conceded that De Armond, of Bates County, 
was the strongest and fittest lawyer in the district for 
circuit judge. He was nominated and elected for a term 
of six years, which position he fdled with marked ability 
for four years. He was in his element in the practice of 
the law and as judge upon the bench; and if he had not 
turned aside into the field of politics and had desired 
and sought for higher judicial honors, he could have 
gone upon the supreme bench of his State and would 
have made a great jurist, for he had all the qualifications 
necessary to make a great lawyer and a great judge. 

In the fourth year of his service as circuit judge — in 
the year 1890 — he was nominated for Congress in a con- 
vention held in the city of Butler, where he resided, on 
the eleven hundredth ballot, there being six candidates 
before the convention, of whom the Hon. Charles H. 
Morgan, who is now a Member of Congress from the 
fifteenth district of Missouri, was one of the candidates. 
This nomination came to Judge De Armond without hav- 
ing made a canvass and with little effort on his part to 
secure it. He was elected in November of that year to 
the Fifty-second Congress from the old twelfth district, 
of which the counties that now compose the sixth district 
were a part. Continuously thereafter he was nominated 
without opposition, so well satisfied was his party with 
his record in Congress, and elected to membership in 
this body, serving without interruption from the 4th day 
of March, 1891, till his death, on the 23d of November, 
1909. If he had lived he would have been renominated 
without opposition and reelected. 

David A. De Armond was successful in every line of 
endeavor, faithful to every trust, honest in the discharge 

[12] 



Address of Mr. Dickinson, of Missouri 



of every duty. The confidence which his constituency 
had in his honesty, ability, and courage was evidenced by 
the loyal support always given him for any high office to 
which he aspired, whether in county or district, sena- 
torial, judicial, or congressional. There was no office 
within the gift of the State, whether it he high judicial, 
executive, or legislative, the duties of which he was not 
fully qualified to discharge with honor and distinction. 
In the judgment of his friends and admirers other posi- 
tions of high honor were within his reach if he had lived 
and been willing to strive for them. But with all his 
ability and fitness for positions of the highest honor and 
trust, whatever may have been his ambitions, he was 
modest and did not thrust himself forward as a candidate 
for office, but rather accepted office that came to him with 
little effort, avoiding strife and struggle for place where 
the ambitions of others might conflict. 

Fate, it seems, allotted to him a career in the Congress 
of the United States, and his most noted field of action 
was here in this great Hall of the House of Representa- 
tives. In the forum of debate he evidenced those quali- 
ties that gave him reputation, endeared him to his friends, 
clothed him with the respect of all Members, and won the 
admiration of his hearers by his marvelous ability in 
debate and clear reasoning upon questions of legislation. 
He filled the office to which the people of the sixth district 
continued to elect him in such a way as to entitle him to 
a foremost place in this great body, where he became a 
leader and attained a Nation-wide reputation. And the 
record here made evidences the fact that he fearlessly 
met every obligation and discharged with ability, with 
honesty, and with courage every duty incumbent upon 
him as the representative of a district and State that 
loved to do him honor. How well and faithful was his 
work here in this great Representative Hall in his long 

[13] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

years of service in this body those who served with him 
and saw and heard him here can best bear witness to his 
worth and his fearless and conscientious discharge of 
every duty as a national legislator. 

De Armond was mature in mind, ripe in judgment, 
careful in decision, honest in conviction, able and fear- 
less in debate, and was always found on the side of the 
people on all public questions. He stood against privi- 
lege and domination of special interests; he stood against 
class legislation and for the rights of the masses every- 
where. His life appeals to the head and heart, to the 
judgment and conscience of his fellow-men. His career 
was an unusual one. It was not meteoric, but it was 
strong and successful. It was earnest and one of cour- 
ageous and honest performance of duty in all relations of 
life. He was loved and admired by his friends; he was 
respected by his opponents. He acted well his part in 
the great drama of life, and went into the beyond 
lamented and mourned by all. 

In the very meridian of his useful life his career was 
ended suddenly by a fearful and tragic death in a mid- 
night fire, which destroyed his home at Butler, Mo., on 
the 23d of November, 1909. Death came to him and his 
little grandson while they slept side by side in an air 
dome, or outside sleeping apartment, screened in and con- 
nected with the second story of the main building of his 
residence. The fire was so far advanced before discov- 
ery that his escape from the air dome was cut off, and, 
despite the desperate and frantic efforts of his wife and 
daughter to reach him, he was burned to death. As the 
wife and daughter were awakened, the voice and appeal 
of the grandchild was heard : 

Get me out of here, granddaddy; get me out of here. 

The reply, in a calm tone: 

Don't be scared, little son; granddaddy will get you out. 

[14] 



Address of Mr. Dickinson, of Missouri 

Such were the words in excitement uttered by the child 
and of assurance by the grandparent, but no further 
words came to the wife and daughter. So far as the tone 
of his voice could indicate, in the very moment prior to 
his death, he evidenced the same calmness and apparent 
freedom from excitement that had characterized him 
through life in his dealings with men and in maintaining 
his poise in the heat of public debate. The conclusion 
reached by his family is that De Armond had gathered 
the child, with the bed clothes around him, into his arms 
and opened the door which led into the main body of the 
house, intending to bear the child, thus protected, through 
the burning building to safety; but a very whirlpool of 
flames met and enveloped them in the doorway of the 
little apartment through which they attempted to escape 
and quickly overcame them. The wife, prostrated by the 
awful catastrophe, was borne by the daughter from the 
burning building, and the son, James De Armond, and 
father of the grandchild, rushing from his home across 
the street, was restrained by friends from entering the 
building, now filled with flames, in an attempt to reach 
his child and father. 

Among the ruins and ashes of his home were found the 
charred remains of the distinguished lawyer, judge, and 
statesman, side by side with that of the little grandson. 
For this child he bore the tenderest affection. In life, 
while at home during the recess of Congress, they were 
almost inseparable. The news of the tragic fate that had 
come to this distinguished Representative shocked the 
Nation and brought universal sorrow and sympathy, and 
touched the heart of the entire country. Messages of 
condolence flashed from all parts of the land, evidencing 
the esteem in which he was held and the deep sense of 
loss that had come to the Nation. The press everywhere 
gave prominent mention of the great calamity. 

[15] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

No more noted gathering ever assembled to pay tribute 
to the dead than that which came to show their respect, 
add their sympathy, and mingle their tears in sorrow with 
the family and friends in the home city of the brilliant 
and lamented De Armond. The multitude that gathered 
and heard the last words of sorrow and praise uttered 
over the remains of the departed man and grandchild, 
placed in one casket, followed in one long procession 
their bodies as they were borne to their last resting place, 
and in silence paid the last tribute while the remains of 
this heroic character were consigned by loving hands with 
Masonic rites to an honored grave in the cemetery near 
his home city of Butler, Mo. The ceremonies at the grave 
were conducted by a brother Master Mason, his friend 
and former colleague in this House, Gov. A. M. Dockery, 
of Missouri. 

The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears; 

The black earth yawns; the mortal disappears; 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; 

He is gone who seemed so great. 

Gone; but nothing can bereave him 

Of the force he made his own 

Being here, and we believe him 

Something far advanced in state, 

And that he wears a truer crown 

Than any wreath that man can weave him. 

All men sorrow over the departure of this statesman, 
whose life, both public and private, was clean and above 
reproach. All men pay tribute to his memory, and his- 
tory will preserve the record of his deeds and virtues. 
He lived a good life, worthy of example and emulation 
by all who desire to do the right. 

I am told that he was always on " legislative guard," 
and that his death left here a vacancy that can not be 
filled. I am told that he spoke not to empty seats, but 
that the House quickly filled when it was learned that 

[16] 



Address of Mr. Dickinson, of Missouri 

De Armond was speaking, and that his colleagues listened 
with attentive ears to the words uttered by his matchless 
tongue. It is not for me to recount his activities here, 
nor make mention of the things that made more memora- 
ble his active congressional life. Those who served with 
him in this great Hall of Representatives will speak of 
his legislative career and his notable record here, and 
with more ability and in language more eloquent pay 
fitting tribute to his grand character and many virtues. 

As I knew him, " His life was gentle, and the elements 
so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all 
the world, ' This was a man.' " " We shall not look upon 
his like again." " He has crossed over the river; he has 
gone to the other side." Amid the flames of an earthly 
fire his life went out. In the peace of an eternity his 
spirit lives forever. 



71 132= — 11 2 [17] 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 

Mr. Speaker: The announcement on the morning of the 
23d of November last of the ineffably sad and fearfully 
tragic death of David A. De Armond, long a familiar and 
commanding figure in this House, came with the startling 
suddenness of an alarm bell in the stillness of the night. 
Coming without the shadow of warning, and in form so 
terrible, the untimely death of one so widely known, so 
universally respected, and so eminently distinguished in 
the civil and political life of his country, sent a thrill of 
horror throughout the land and filled with unutterable 
anguish the hearts of his grief-stricken associates upon 
both sides of this Chamber. 

We are met to-day to pay a parting tribute to his 
memory, to publicly testify to the virtues so beautifully 
illustrated in his private life and so abundantly exempli- 
fied in his illustrious public career. 

The extremely intimate relations which existed between 
Judge De Armond and myself — indeed, the deep affection 
which we bore for each other from almost the first hour, 
when, nearly two decades ago, we together entered this 
Hall, and which continued unabated up to the last 
moment of his life — stir within my bosom such painful 
emotions as to suggest that silence might best become me 
upon an occasion laden with the sadness surrounding 
this. 

To what has already been said of Judge De Armond — 
particularly as to his early history and achievements — 1 

[18] 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 



can add little of interest. He was a native of Blair 
County, Pa., and, as has been so strikingly true of many 
of the great men whose lives have shed luster upon our 
American Republic, his youth was largely spent upon ;i 
farm — in his case a farm so sterile and unproductive thai 
it barely sufficed to provide the means of livelihood for 
his father's family. He was the oldest of a family of six 
children, five boys and one girl. His father, James De 
Armond, was also a native of Pennsylvania, and his 
grandfather, who lived to the extraordinary age of more 
than a hundred years, was a soldier of the American Rev- 
olution. Truly he came of a sturdy stock and a long- 
lived parentage, for his father, who was born in the year 
1790, lived until 188.1, and Judge De Armond only survived 
his mother, whose maiden name was Catherine Albaugh, 
by five short years, she having died in her ninetieth year. 

I esteem myself happy in having met and known this 
most estimable lady. Her declining years were passed 
at the home of her distinguished son, who, it need scarcely 
be said, was the pride of her life and the idol of her heart, 
and of whose childhood and early life especially it was 
her delight to discourse. She knew better than any other 
of his early struggles, of the obstacles which in his young 
manhood he courageously encountered and resolutely 
surmounted, and it was hers to witness the successes 
which in after years attended his efforts — the splendid 
triumphs which came as the crowning glory of a life filled 
with high purpose and devoted to noble endeavor. 

Bv the exercise of the strictest economy and self-denial 
Judge De Armond's parents were enabled to give to him 
the best educational advantages which the common and 
higher grade schools of that day and section afforded. 
It was his good fortune to attend for several years a high 
school at Hollidaysburg, the county seat of Blair County, 
conducted bv an educator of note, who had been 



[19] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

connected for many years with one of the great German 
universities, and later he was graduated with distinction 
from Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport, Pa. In the 
meantime the family had removed to Davenport, Iowa, 
to which place, after his graduation, he immediately re- 
paired, and where subsequently he read law and was 
admitted to the bar. He began the practice of law at 
Greenfield, Mo., where for a short period, and until he had 
established himself in his profession, he taught a class in 
mathematics at Ozark Female College. Fourteen years 
later, in quest of a larger field for the practice of his pro- 
fession, he removed to the town of Rich Hill, Bates 
County, but soon thereafter established his home at But- 
ler, in the same county, where he resided for the remain- 
der of his life, and where he continued for some time to 
practice law with signal ability and a large measure of 
success. 

The constitution of Missouri requires a revision of the 
general statutes of that State once in every ten years. 
When the revision of 1879 was made Judge De Armond 
was a member of the State senate, and he brought to this 
important work such industry, application, and legal 
acumen as to attract the attention of the bar of bis State. 
Later on, and without any knowledge that his name was 
being considered in that connection, he was chosen a 
member of the supreme court commission of his State, 
the duties and functions of which were coordinate with 
those of the supreme court itself. He continued a mem- 
ber of this high court until it was abolished, and the 
opinions delivered by him are yet regarded as among the 
best, if not actually the best, ever pronounced by the 
highest judicial tribunal of Missouri. Afterwards he was 
elected to a circuit judgeship, which position he relin- 
quished after several years for a seat in Congress. As 
a lawyer he was widely known as a wise counselor and a 



•jii 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 



brilliant advocate. As a judge he was pure, just, fearless, 
learned, and independent. 

Of Judge De Armond's congressional career I shall not 
speak at great length. It covered an important period in 
the life of our Republic and has now become a part of its 
history. During his extended service in this body many 
questions of transcendent importance arose and many 
grave and weighty problems of international as well as 
national concern engaged the serious attention of the 
master minds of Congress. To what extent he partici- 
pated in the discussion of these momentous questions and 
in what degree he contributed toward the solution of 
these vast problems many of you here present are living 
witnesses. The country, too, is not uninformed as to his 
brilliant congressional record. 

There have unquestionably been greater orators in this 
House since I have had a knowledge of its membership, 
but as a past master of debate Judge De Armond stood in 
a class all alone. He possessed a wonderful vocabulary, 
and his command of the English language was simply 
marvelous. In accuracy of expression and purity of style 
and diction he was unexcelled, and his powers of invec- 
tive and of sarcasm have not been surpassed in this day 
and generation. He was one of the very few men whom 
I have known so mentally alert and so fluent of speech 
and who possessed so complete a mastery over their 
mental processes that their extemporaneous addresses 
were no less accurate in expression and elegant in lan- 
guage than those which had been prepared with pains- 
taking care and reduced to writing. Among all of those 
who sat with him on this side of this Hall during my 
period of service here I can recall but two — John R. 
Fellows, of New York, and W. C. P. Breckinridge, of 
Kentucky— who possessed this rare gift in anything like 
the same degree. His remarks required little or no 

[21] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

revision. It would have been difficult to improve upon 
either the form or the substance of those delivered under 
the spur of the moment and in the heat of debate. And 
this was equally true of those more formal addresses 
which he so frequently was called upon to make before 
literary societies, educational institutions, social gather- 
ings, and great political assemblages, but which he rarely 
reduced to writing and never memorized. 

In one respect this extraordinary endowment of speech 
detracted from rather than contributed to his reputation 
as an orator and public speaker outside of this Chamber. 
His speeches were frequently not so fully or so accurately 
reported as were some less worthy the space occupied by 
them in the public press, but which were given more 
prominence for the sole reason that press copies had been 
prepared in advance of their delivery. This explains, in 
some measure at least, the fact that his reputation as an 
orator rests to a large extent upon the spirited colloquies 
and heated controversies in which he so frequently en- 
gaged with his political adversaries when some party 
question had been suddenly injected into the debate. 
And yet it may not be denied that he never appeared to 
better advantage than when party feeling ran highest and 
party conflict raged the fiercest. It was upon thrilling 
occasions such as these that he was put forth by his party 
associates as their foremost champion, and in no one of 
the many fierce encounters in which he bore the leading 
part did his colleagues ever have reason to regret their 
choice. In no debate was his standard ever lowered in 
the presence of any adversary, notwithstanding the fact 
that against him were always arrayed the brightest intel- 
lects and the strongest debaters to be found in the ranks 
of his political antagonists. From no one of the many 
intellectual battles in which he was engaged did he ever 
retire discomfited. 

[22] 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 



As a parliamentarian Judge De Armono took high rank. 
He cared little for mere precedent it was' the general 
principles of parliamentary law about which he con- 
cerned himself. The fact that some temporary occupant 
of the Speaker's chair had upon some previous occasion 
ruled in a certain way was not permitted to control either 
his judgment or his action, and therefore when he felt 
that a decision of the Chair contravened a fundamental 
principle of parliamentary law, he did not hesitate to 
appeal therefrom. 

If not actually the first to direct public attention to what 
he devoutly believed to be the injustice of the rules gov- 
erning this House, he was the most persistent as he was 
admittedly the most conspicuous and the ablest of all 
their denunciators. And whilst he did not live to witness 
the culmination of the warfare which he incessantly 
waged against these rules, his life was sufficiently pro- 
longed to enable him to die in the full confidence that the 
contest which he had inaugurated in behalf of the indi- 
vidual rights of the membership of this House had taken 
so firm a hold upon the public mind, and had rallied to 
its support so many champions here and elsewhere, that 
the final issue was no longer in doubt. 

Early in the first session of the Fifty-second Congress 
the House was engaged in framing a code of rules de- 
signed to supersede those which had been in operation 
during the Fifty-first Congress, the enforcement of which 
had raised the issue of " czarism." The discussion over 
their adoption covered a wide range and occupied many 
days. It was participated in by most of the leading and 
older Members of this body, including such able parlia- 
mentarians and intellectual giants as Thomas B. Reed, 
Nelson Dingley, Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles F. Crisp, 
and Roger Q. Mills. On the one side the effort was to 
uphold and defend what had become known as the Reed 



[23] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

rules. On the other it was to disparage those rules as 
the instruments of usurpation and tyranny. 

The Republicans sought to justify their adoption and 
enforcement as necessary to the suppression of filibuster- 
ing. The Democrats assailed the parliamentary practices 
of the preceding Congress as subversive of the rights of 
individual Members and as destructive of free govern- 
ment itself, holding that under such conditions the resort 
to filibustering methods was not only justifiable, but a 
patriotic duty. It was during this memorable debate that 
Judge De Armond, an unfledged Member, arose for the 
first time to address the House. His remarks commanded 
instant attention and secured for him high recognition in 
a body in which many of the ablest statesmen of the 
country then figured. He declared it to be the purpose 
of his party associates, then in control of the House, to 
get away from one-man power and from that philosophy 
which tempted a man to play the role of tyrant and dic- 
tator, and which destroyed the equality which, under the 
Constitution, should exist. In the defense of the right of 
filibuster on the part of a minority, he declared : 

Whatever may be the result of filibustering in this country and 
the result of filibustering in this House, it is a matter of history 
that the most infamous schemes ever concocted by vile partisan- 
ship, the worst that tyranny dictated or tyrants have endeavored 
to enforce have been defeated, in whole or in part, by resorting 
to the process of filibustering. Filibustering rises to the dignity 
of a high duty when it is interposed to check the mad rush of a 
majority over the rights of a minority. For minorities have 
rights under the Constitution and according to the old traditions. 

Judge De Armond's inborn sense of justice was such 
that he was always the implacable foe of " czarism," and 
the voice which was so eloquently lifted against its exer- 
cise in the first hours of the Fifty-second Congress never 
ceased to protest against the centralization of power in 

[24] 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 



the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives until 
it was forever hushed in death. 

From that time on his position in this House was as- 
sured. His progress was always upward, and his growth 
in public favor and confidence, as well as in the esteem of 
his associates here, was steady and sure. 

During the consideration of the Wilson tariff bill in the 
House he delivered two notable speeches, thereby estab- 
lishing his right to be ranked among the foremost of the 
advocates of tariff reform. There were a number of the 
schedules and provisions of that measure which, in its 
final form, did not meet his approval, but he regarded it 
as infinitely better than the law it was intended to super- 
sede, and the speech which he delivered when the report 
of the conferees was under consideration contributed in 
no small degree to its acceptance by the House. The fea- 
ture of the bill which met his highest approval was that 
which imposed a tax upon incomes. And in this connec- 
tion it may be observed, as indicative of bis steadfastness 
of purpose and his unchanging belief in the correctness 
of his position upon this great fiscal question, that in his 
verv last utterances upon the floor of this House he de- 
clared it to be his conviction that an income tax was the 
fairest and the least burdensome of all the forms of 
taxation. 

Although best known to the world by reason of his bril- 
liancy as an orator and debater, and as a great parlia- 
mentary leader, Judge De Armond was recognized by his 
associates as a great constitutional lawyer. For years lie- 
stood at the head of the minority of the Judiciary Com- 
mittee, and many of his addresses upon purely legal and 
constitutional questions are justly regarded as master- 
pieces of lucid reasoning and profound learning. His 
speech in the Swayne impeachment trial before the Sen- 
ate of the United States and that in the well-known 



[25] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

Roberts case in this House were models of logic and rea- 
son, and they stamped their author as one of the greatest 
lawyers of Congress. 

Whilst Judge De Armond was a diligent student of the 
momentous public questions of the day, and throughout 
his service here delighted in taking a prominent part in 
their investigation and discussion, it must not be thought 
that he did so to the exclusion of the consideration of 
those minor matters which enter so largely into the life 
of a Representative in Congress. This would be very far 
from the truth. As there was no subject of legislation of 
such magnitude as to be beyond the grasp of his powerful 
intellect, so there was none too small to receive his atten- 
tion. Rarely out of his seat when the House was in ses- 
sion, he gave the same sedulous care to the smaller that 
he was accustomed to bestow upon the larger matters of 
legislation. Industrious in habit, and constant in appli- 
cation to every duty, large or small, he responded 
promptly to every proper and legitimate call upon his 
time and energies. His mind was never so completely 
occupied with great problems of state as to prevent his 
attention to matters of less public importance, but which 
doubtless more intimately concerned the interests of his 
constituents. 

I have already alluded to his wonderful powers of sar- 
casm. Perhaps the finest exhibition he ever gave of his 
great ability in this respect was when, in the Fifty-fourth 
Congress, he replied to an attack made upon him by one 
of his colleagues from the State of Missouri Nothing to 
excel that reply can be found in the annals of Congress. 
This colleague had concluded his speech with a reference 
to the small majority, which he declared was less than a 
hundred, by which Judge De Armond had been returned 
to Congress at the last preceding election, and had pre- 
dicted that it would be even smaller in the next ensuing 

• [26] 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 



one. So effective was the reply of this gladiator of 
debate, this master of the art of repartee, so withering his 
sarcasm, and so killing the blows which he dealt him who 
had thus rashly and unwisely presumed to cross swords 
with him in the arena of debate, that the incident a I once 
attained the proportions and dignity of a great issue in 
the politics in Missouri, with the result that Judge De 
Armond was returned by a majority approaching 6,000 
over the vote received by his strongest opponent, whilst 
his less fortunate colleague, discredited from the start, 
did not dare to seek a renomination at the hands of the 
party which theretofore had delighted to honor him. 

He rarely attempted to make a witty or an amusing 
speech, although he was not lacking in a sense of humor. 
When he did essay the r61e of humorist it was generally 
for the purpose of holding up to public condemnation 
what he conceived to be a mistaken public policy, or of 
exposing some social evil. He was always and at all times 
a steadfast opponent of the policy pursued by our Gov- 
ernment in respect to the Philippines, and when some 
measure relating to the appropriation of money for their 
fortification was under discussion he delivered a speech 
which for cutting humor has seldom been surpassed. It 
deserves to be ranked among the choicest specimens of 
humorous sarcasm to be found in our literature. It 
revealed what, to many, was an unsuspected phase of his 
wonderful intellectuality. It displayed in striking fashion 
the remarkable versatility of his genius. Great earnest- 
ness characterized all of his public utterances, and yet, as 
upon this occasion, he was capable of employing the keen- 
est shafts of wit and humor to drive home his arguments. 

The position which he occupied in this House was quite 
unique. He never sought the titular leadership of his 
party, although more than once his friends had endeav- 



[27] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armoxd 

ored to confer that honor upon him. He realized to the 
fullest that whilst such leadership was a high distinction, 
it was also one of great responsibility, and therefore, ac- 
cording to his code of political philosophy, not to be 
striven for. He realized, too, that his independence of 
spirit and judgment were such as might possibly unfit him 
for the position of minority leader. He was an earnest, 
zealous Democrat, and yet he did not permit his partisan- 
ship to blind his judgment, and he reserved to himself 
at all times the right to follow the dictates of that 
judgment. Nor did he ever hesitate to oppose any meas- 
ure which he believed to be wrong in principle merely be- 
cause it had Democratic indorsement. His fairness, like 
his honesty, was never questioned by friend or foe, and 
he numbered among the Republican membership of this 
House many of his best friends. 

He was ambitious, but his aspirations were neither 
selfish nor ignoble. No thought of personal advancement 
at the expense of a friend was ever entertained by him, 
and no consideration of personal aggrandizement coidd 
have possibly influenced his action. Devotion to country 
and unswerving fidelity to duty were the mainsprings of 
his life. His methods were direct, his actions open, and 
he never concealed his position upon any question, evaded 
any issue, or sought to escape any responsibility which 
fairly attached to his course. He possessed in an eminent 
degree the courage of his convictions. 

His was a chivalrous and an intensely sympathetic 
nature. He was ever ready to defend the cause of the 
oppressed and needy, and the downtrodden, struggling 
masses everywhere found in him an able and fearless 
champion. His sympathies were always enlisted on the 
side of the weak rather than on that of the strong, and his 
voice was never more fervent or his tongue more eloquent 



[28] 



Address of Mr. Jones, of Virginia 



than when defending the rights of the one and opposing 
the aggressions of the other. 

Of his personal traits of character, so beautifully 
exemplified in his private and domestic life, I shall say 
but little. Nothing short of a profound sense of loyalty to 
his hallowed memory could induce me to speak at all of 
the personal side of the life of him who was endeared to 
me by the sweetest and tenderest ties of intimate associa- 
tion and deep affection. 

He was the most courageous man I ever knew, and he 
was as honest as he was fearless. He was constant and 
loyal to his friends, generous and magnanimous to his 
adversaries. He despised hypocrisy and detested with 
all his soul the wiles of the demagogue. For the self- 
seeking and obsequious politician he entertained a 
supreme contempt. He abhorred deceit, and he hated 
falsehood. He was the personification of truth, and no 
man ever lived who possessed a more exalted sense of 
honor. 

Sham and pretense in every form were hateful to him 
and an ungenerous or cruel act never failed to kindle his 
righteous indignation. Were I asked to name the domi- 
nant trait in his character I would say fidelity to truth 
and hatred of injustice. His most engaging characteristic 
was his exquisite modesty. Indeed, it had become so 
much a part of " the warp and the woof" of his life that 
it was sometimes even mistaken for timidity. His tastes 
were simple, his pleasures innocent and wholesome, and 
his life singularly pure and beautiful. His cruel but 
heroic death was a public calamity. His precious memory 
will be a lofty inspiration for all who come after him and 
a priceless inheritance for those who loved him best and 
honored him most. 



129; 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

The last words of the great and the good are the most 
impressive, and they deserve to be preserved in history. 

The tongues of dying men 
Enforce attention like deep harmony; 
Where words are scarce they're seldom spent in vain, 
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. 

The last words of David A. De Armond, uttered in reply 
to the agonizing appeal of the child whom he loved better 
than his life, and so calmly spoken in the very jaws of 
death, exhibited the heroism and the devotion of a Chris- 
tian martyr. They were the sweetest, the tenderest, the 
noblest, and the bravest that ever fell from the lips of 
mortal man : 

Have no fear, my son, granddaddy will save you. 



[30] 



Address of Mr. Parker, of New Jersey 

Mr. Speaker: It is a very few months ago since I here 
received the news that my old friend and our old friend, 
David A. De Armoxd, was dead, dying as he had lived, the 
bravest of the brave, walking unblenched into the blast 
of a fiery furnace, with the little child that he was trying 
to save. Courage and determination were at the bottom 
of a character which was like the diamond that scratches 
every stone. It was a character that we all felt, but some 
of us differently from others. Some knew him only as the 
fighter on this floor. We in the Committee on the Judi- 
ciary knew him as the kindly, wise, patriotic, and friendly 
associate of our consultations. There was there not one 
particle of the sarcasm or of the disposition for combat 
which perhaps in some respects hurt his influence upon 
this floor. We knew him always as a friend, always wise, 
always patriotic, and always brave, and we came to love 
him. 

He was the senior member of that committee when he 
died. He had been there since the 11th day of January, 
1894, in the second session of his second term in Congress, 
when he seemed to have taken the place of the honorable 
Member from New York, Mr. John R. Fellows, whose 
name no longer appeared upon that committee. He had 
served there in November, 1909, for nearly 16 years with 
such men as David B. Henderson, afterwards Speaker; 
the Senator from Texas [Mr. Bailey], once Demo- 
cratic leader in this House; with David B. Culberson, 

■ 

[31] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

of Texas, who was chairman when he first joined the 
committee; and with other men still well known in this 
House as members of our Committees on Ways and 
Means, Appropriations, and Military Affairs, as well as the 
chairman of our Committee on Rivers and Harbors. 

The changes that have taken place in the Judiciary 
Committee are such that only two of us — the gentleman 
from Alabama [Mr. Clayton] and myself — have been 
members for 10 years. I look back to 13 years of inti- 
mate association, twice a week, at least, during the ses- 
sions of Congress, with this man whose strength of mind 
and heart made him a leader in our midst. 

I have said almost all that I should. So much has 
been so well said on the subject of his record here and 
before he came here, in the family, in the Nation, and 
in the courts, that I can add nothing except my amen and 
the tribute of a friend who learned to know and love him, 
as all did who met him intimately. 

It was strange, and almost a contrast in his character, 
how absolutely his mildness, humility, kindness, and con- 
sideration in council differed from the savage strength, 
as if drawn from his Norman ancestry, that appeared 
whenever he came upon a field of battle, either in this 
House or in a canvass. It was as if there were two men, 
and yet it was the same man. His character survives, as 
personal qualities always do. The impress of his mind 
survives. He had the calm light of the intellect that was 
like starlight — what one of the ancients called " dry 
light " — coming through clear air, unmixed with mois- 
ture, undimmed by passion and by feeling. He had that 
grit which is the grain of character. He made his own 
destiny. He knew how to be poor and pure. He dared 
to love his country and be poor. His thought was what 
has been called " a living ray of intellectual fire." His 
courage made him always call true what he thought true, 

[32] 



Address of Mr. Parker, oi New Jersey 

and brand as false what he thought false. His governing 
motive, noblest of all, grew more and more to be nothing 
but the public good, and he has left behind him the affec- 
tion of his friends, the grief of a loving and devoted 
family, and the respect of all those who remember him 
as a man. 

Mr. Speaker, I will add but one thing. It is well that 
this meeting has taken place here. When I went out to 
Butler, Mo., lo the funeral I found that it was a comfort 
to his family, even then, to see some of those with whom 
his life and their own had been cast for so many years, 
and with whom their life and his was no longer to he 
associated. It is well that so many have met together 
here to-day, because we may hope that it will comfort 
those to whom he was nearest and dearest to feel that we 
who knew him here remember him and prize that 
memory. 



71432°— 11 3 [33] 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of New York 

Mr. Speaker: For 12 years I had the honor and pleas- 
ure of serving upon the Judiciary Committee with Mr. 
De Armoxd, meeting him almost daily and somewhat inti- 
mately. Measured by legislative service in this House, 
such long association is rare. Yet in all those years Mr. 
De Armond, because of the excellence of his character and 
personal demeanor, was uniformly esteemed an ideal 
gentleman, a charming associate, and a sincere friend. 
More than that, he was recognized as a man of very great 
ability. He was, too, of a singularly simple and consistent 
nature, possessing the delicate touch, the refined expres- 
sion, and the diffident manner of a scholar. Instead of 
the story-telling and laughter of the cloakroom, he pre- 
ferred the quiet of empty benches or the silence of the 
committee room. Indeed, so diffident was he that prob- 
ably 100 Members of the Sixty-first Congress had never 
so much as spoken to him. Even to his intimates he 
rarely made those friendly overtures which so greatly en- 
rich associations in this House. He delighted to have 
people go to him. For hours he would sit and talk of 
men or of measures, evidencing the keenest interest in 
whatever concerned those about him; but it seemed im- 
possible for him to approach others, dropping now and 
then into a seat beside them or stopping to chat in the 
aisles or the corridors. 

In debate on the floor of the House, where his remark- 
able resources of sarcasm and sardonic humor made so 

T34T 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of New York 

distinct an impression, one could get small idea of liis 
real personality. His sparkling paradox, liis pungent 
epigram, and the audacity of his vivid and savage retorts 
made him at times appear as the fierce spokesman of 
everybody who affected to chafe with wrath at the domi- 
nance of a majority charged with substituting for parlia- 
mentary government the ironclad decrees of the Com- 
mittee on Rules. These rattling attacks, almost bewilder- 
ing in their vehement and scornful invective, had the 
effect for the moment of dividing the membership of the 
House into two apparently hostile camps. To one side 
bis forceful presentation took the form of appeal; to the 
other it came as a challenge. This effect was doubtless 
deepened because of the limitations of his oratorical 
qualifications. He bad poise, deliberation, coolness, un- 
usual facility in debate, remarkable readiness in repartee, 
and great fluency. But these endowments do not neces- 
sarily make an orator. With a richer combination of 
gifts Edmund Burke is classed as a distinguished political 
essayist, Macaulay as a fascinating talker, and George 
Canning as a "burnished" rhetorician. An orator must 
have presence, manner, style, and imagination, as well 
as fluency, reason, argument, and passion, while his 
words, penetrating in their pathos and irresistible in their 
humor, must be accompanied by the emphasis of his 
gestures and accentuated by the music of his voice. 

In a popular and perhaps true sense Mr. De Armond 
was not an entertaining speaker. His gift of words was 
truly wonderful. There was never any halt or incoher- 
ence*. Though unhelped by imagination and indulging in 
few flowers of rhetoric, he was a master of speech, fin- 
ished, correct, and singularly transparent. However long 
and involved his sentences, he never breached the rules 
of grammar or failed to reach a clear and legitimate con- 
clusion. In passages of indignant remonstrance, when 



35 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 



word followed word like the blows of a blacksmith's ham- 
mer, the wealth of his vocabulary seemed inexhaustible 
and the flow of his sarcasm never to slacken. At such 
times it was a bold antagonist who dared to address him, 
for interruption added new stimulus. Retorts leaped to 
his lips, often blending scorn with contempt, until one- 
half the House shouted its applause while the other grimly 
and silently watched the exhibition of his remarkable 
resources. 

Yet he made no enemies and lost no friends. He never 
confused petulance for sarcasm and insolence for in- 
vective, which Disraeli charged Sir Charles Wood with 
doing. About him there was no swagger, no bravado, no 
pompous tone, nothing paradoxical or conceited. He 
neither sought to make himself conspicuous nor to ex- 
pound views or political creeds which other members of 
his party avoided. It was self-evident that in doing what 
he conceived to be his duty as a minority member of the 
Rules Committee no desire possessed him to provoke an 
angry scene or stir up violence. Moreover, he showed 
simplicity of character, a brave, lofty spirit, and real 
genius. 

Nevertheless, his forensic efforts left an unfortunate im- 
pression — unfortunate for him and sometimes a grief to 
friends, since they concealed a charming personality from 
scores of Members who never had an opportunity of hear- 
ing or seeing him elsewhere. When presenting arguments 
on similar occasions I have observed that my friend, Mr. 
Clark, as minority leader, rarely disturbs the temper of 
the House. In the excitement or heat of controversy, how- 
ever recklessly he may fling out pleasantries or deal in 
personalities, he seldom, if ever, indulges in offensive in- 
vective, or in criticism that leaves a sting. Perhaps Mr. 
De Armond, in spite of a positive genius for saying bitter 
things in the bitterest way, would have produced a dif- 

[36] 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of New York 

ferent impression had nature endowed him with counter- 
balancing gifts. He lacked the strong, resonant voice thai 
charms even though the rhetoric be steeped in sarcasm 
and scorn. Moreover, the usual absence of humor of the 
playful kind, which commonly relieves if it does not 
always delight an audience, often marred the effect of 
his words, while his facial expression failed to disclose 
the amiable feelings that dominated him. As he moved 
on with torrent-like fluency his black eyes gleamed 
fiercely, giving him the appearance of one stirred with a 
desire to resent and condemn rather than to convince and 
convert. At such times, perhaps, his colleagues on tin- 
majority side of the Chamber may not be blamed if they 
got the notion that animosity controlled him; that instead 
of being a statesman he was a bigoted partisan, bent not 
so much upon gaining by a bit of strategy some party 
advantage, as to vent his spleen upon the leaders of the 
majority and their alleged vassal followers. Nevertheless, 
he was a model combatant. When his speech was over 
he was ready to sit down beside any of his opponents and 
talk with the amiability of a child. 

In the committee room all his winning endowments 
came into evidence. About the table, covered with law 
books and briefs, he seemed perfectly at ease, and into 
the sport of discussion, often made lively by the rush of 
Littlefield's arguments and Clayton's loud retorts, he 
joined with good-natured heartiness. He did, indeed, 
sometimes indicate singular sensitiveness to a nonob- 
servance of the proprieties, making one feel, perhaps, 
that, if necessary, the vials of his sarcasm might easily hi' 
opened. Nevertheless, the eruption never came. On the 
contrary, courtesy and consideration uniformly adorned 
his treatment of colleagues, while a disposition to meet 
all questions fairly and seriously, giving due attention 
to the opinion of each member, disclosed high personal 

[37] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armoxd 

character and a sweet nature. This characteristic gentle- 
ness did not forsake him even in the hour of danger. 
When his little grandson, as has already been referred to 
by Mr. Dickinson, to whom he was most deeply attached, 
and with whom he slept on the night of the fatal fire, 
asked that some one save him, the grandfather was heard 
to reply, calmly and tenderly, " I will take care of you, my 
son." 

It was exceedingly profitable to confer with Mr. De Ar- 
moxd respecting measures before the committee. A 
charm in his manner, a delightful modesty in his expres- 
sion of an opinion, and a perfect logic in his reasoning 
attracted one like a magnet. His attitude was that of a 
pupil — not a teacher. But his suggestions always re- 
vealed, like a lantern in a dark room, some new view or 
a doorway opening to the truth. Equally helpful was the 
remarkable facility with which he developed his thought. 
A man gifted with a large vocabulary can seldom resist 
the temptation of showering too many words on his sub- 
ject, sometimes obscuring the meaning and often becom- 
ing incoherent. Mr. De Armoxd was neither redundant 
nor involved. This was one source of his great power. 
He could quickly grasp a thought and as readily transfer 
it to another. 

It is doubtful if he had in the House, unless it were 
Speaker Cannon, a rival in the one great quality of readi- 
ness. The question has often been asked, When and how 
did he prepare his speeches? He seldom wrote them. 
Rarely did he revise after their delivery. Even when 
hammering the majority in half an hour's speech, without 
the slightest modulation of voice, his words never led him 
astray, while his sentences sparkled like a clear trout 
stream in the sunshine. Indeed, he seemed to require no 
preparation. At a given moment he could marshal argu- 
ments as if by instinct, never hesitating for the right word 

[38] 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of New York 

and never changing the number of a noun or the tense of 
a verb. His mind seemed to be fed like a mountain spring 
whose flow never dries up. 

Of course this gift was inherited, not acquired. It evi- 
denced itself so abundantly when a young practitioner 
that it brought early promotion to the bench. As the 
story was told me at Butler on the funeral day. he argued 
a case so ably on the spur of the moment that the supreme 
court of the State immediately thereafter tendered him 
a place on the commission charged with the reduction of 
an overburdened docket. 

Whatever he said in the committee room seemed in- 
spired by the wish to set up high ideals with which to 
measure every question. Dominated by such devotion to 
duty, it would be easy for one of bis unusual gifts to be- 
come an agitator, with the narrowness and monotony that 
incessant agitation often brings. "Yet he never disclosed 
rashness or obstinacy or conceit. Fairness and candor 
characterized his advocacy of every measure, however 
forceful his easy flowing rhetoric became, and after the 
committee had decided against him by its vote no one 
heard him criticize or complain, for toward honest differ- 
ence of judgment he was both tolerant and frankly re- 
spectful. His indignation at hypocrisy, however, was a 
flame as stead}' as it was hot. In characterizing it, the 
word " fear " did not find a place in his vocabulary. 

Whatever his party associations and political sympa- 
thies might be, Mr. De Armond, as I learned in the com- 
mittee room, was at heart and by temperament conserva- 
tive. With painstaking and critical care he sought to 
know the right, and with firmness he supported what he 
finally decided was right. Yet, above all things, he recog- 
nized that political fitness should lead one not to forget 
that in the end he must meet the voters face to face at 
the polls with ballots in their hands, demanding as a con- 

[39] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armoxd 

dition of their support, fidelity and undivided devotion to 
the cause in which he had enlisted them. This was one 
reason for his long and continuous service in Congress. 
In other words, he had recognized a tribunal which judges 
the action of public men. I do not know that there ever 
came into his political life a body of citizens who, instead 
of wearing the party uniform, often give victory by voting 
their individual preferences; but of one thing I feel as- 
sured, that no oligarchy of independents or machine 
bosses could have controlled him in any matter which did 
not appeal to his sense of right and justice. 

Mr. Speaker, Mr. De Armond's tragic end came to me, 
as it did to so many others, as a personal bereavement. 
It seemed as if death had invaded my own family. But 
sorrow for his loss was not limited to friends. Intelligent 
citizens in every State bear in mind the men who, by their 
integrity and high achievement, shed luster upon their 
Commonwealth, and when one of them is taken the body 
politic recognizes the passing of a vigorous mind, an in- 
fluential personality, a potential force. That the death of 
Mr. De Armond thus affected the people of Missouri was 
disclosed in the State press and at the funeral. Repre- 
sentatives of all classes, regardless of station, creed, or 
color, with solemn countenances and regretful words, 
bore appreciative evidence of their irreparable loss, for 
the statesman of whom they were supremely proud had 
fallen before age had stamped upon his fair face a single 
line of care. 



[40] 



Address of Mr. Bartholdt, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: When on great occasions David Albaugh 
De Armoxd rose to address the House, he was usually 
greeted with applause by his parly colleagues. 11 was 
a tribute to his signal ability rather than his personal 
popularity, for the merely popular man is rarely so hon- 
ored. It was the homage paid to the ready debater, the 
brilliant reasoner, the steadfast defender of his party's 
tenets. He was much too modest to seek the distinction 
thus often bestowed upon him, and while he would never 
by any outward sign betray his satisfaction at such dem- 
onstrations in his honor, we can well imagine how deeply 
they must have touched him, just because it was so 
entirely foreign to his nature to seek them. 

Through an association during nine successive Con- 
gresses, it is quite natural that I should have learned to 
know him well, and I have respected him for the honesty 
of his purpose and the independence of his judgment 
from the time I first met him— that is, in the Fifty-third 
Congress, when he refused to lend his vote to the unseat- 
ing of a Member of the minority party from his own State 
on the just ground that that Member had received a plu- 
rality of the votes at the polls. When in the next Congress 
his party became the minority, he forged still more per- 
manently to the front. It seems his great forte was in 
the opposition, and while he was a gentleman of most 
polished manners and charming personality and of a 
reserve bordering on timidity, it seems as if his whole 
nature changed the moment he buckled on his armor and 
faced the membership of the House in defense of his 
political convictions. Unsparing in his criticism, and 
quick at repartee, he dealt many a stunning blow to his 

11 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

adversaries, while his adherents never failed to derive en- 
couragement and comfort from the skirmishes in which 
he engaged. I often wondered just why it was that no 
lasting bitterness resulted from these hot encounters. 
The explanation is that De Armond never struck below 
the belt, and that his antagonists, like the whole House, 
were always convinced of his absolute sincerity. That 
virtue which, after all, is the crown of manhood, was his 
in public as well as private life, and when to-day we rev- 
erently bow our heads to his memory, we feel the inspira- 
tion of his example. 

The political preferment which the people of his dis- 
trict and State so generously accorded him was well 
merited. He was as true to his trust as the magnet is to 
the pole; and while Missouri, his State and mine, had 
honored him, he in turn shed luster on Missouri through 
the distinguished services he rendered his party and his 
country in the councils of the Nation. 

The whole country was shocked by the tragedy of his 
sudden death, and rarely did I see evidences of more 
genuine sorrow and grief than were shown here upon the 
theater of his honorable public career when the sad news 
came from his little home town in the interior of Missouri. 
Poets for ages have sung of the sadness of death when it 
comes to a man full of life and vigor, to one still ready 
and willing to do a man's part in the world of men. Yet 
the Greeks personified death by a beautiful boy crowned 
with immortal youth; and somehow that ideal seems fit- 
ting, for the deeds of man, the lesson of his life, and the 
good example he gave live forever, and their rejuvenation 
from one generation to the other may well be allegorized 
by youth. Stricken in life's prime, in the fullness of a 
splendid usefulness and fame, David A. De Armond left 
to his family a heritage " more precious than gold and a 
monument more enduring than brass." 

[421 



Address or Mr. Lloyd, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: One year ago David A. De Armond's 
expectancy of life was about 20 years. In conversation 
with him at that time he said he could reasonably expect 
to live until he was past 80 years of age. None would 
then have supposed that in so short a time, without the 
slightest warning, he should be borne hence from so 
frightful a catastrophe as that which overtook him into 
a realm from which no man ever returns. How much 
Providence has to do in the affairs of men is a question 
which the finite can not answer. If all things are the 
result of a Divine plan, who can explain the awful 
calamity which resulted in Mr. De Armond's death, or 
give the reason for his untimely taking. 

Active, vigorous, and well preserved in body and mind, 
he came to the natural sleep from which he awoke in 
death. No man can truly picture that scene when, witb 
consuming flames about him, he said to the grandchild 
to whom he was so devoted " I will save you." But the 
human arm was too short and human effort too feeble to 
accomplish that purpose. The rescuer himself, while 
attempting to save the child, yielded a victim to the con- 
suming flames. 

In the midst of the greatest usefulness where his wise 
counsel meant so much in public affairs his voice is 
hushed and his wisdom ceased to be potent in the affairs 
of men. It can be truly said of Mr. De Armond that be 
has been missed in this body. 

[43] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

The greatest characteristic in anyone's life is genuine 
honesty. I mean that noble trait that always asserts 
itself in right living toward one's fellows. No man occu- 
pied a higher plane than he in this regard. His life was 
an open book, and in the pages of the record which he 
made in his relation to others no blots can be found. He 
had supreme contempt for a little act of duplicity which 
evidenced a want of sincerity of purpose. I have heard 
him on frequent occasions express his disgust at some act 
which he regarded as insincere. He believed that minor 
deeds best exhibited the true character of men, and if 
one showed the proper spirit of fidelity and a correct 
standard of morals in matters of small moment, he could 
always be trusted. I remember he said on one occasion 
that if any person secured advantage by improper meth- 
ods in personal preferment, that the same individual 
would steal if he knew his lawlessness could not be found 
out. 

Mr. De Armond was truthful always and everywhere. 
His life was free from deceit. He expected from others 
the same candor which he exhibited. He was in no sense 
credulous and never questioned the integrity of a man in 
whom he had personal confidence. He was jealous of 
his honor, and would resent with all his strength of body 
and mind any reflection upon his character. No one was 
permitted to impugn his motives or dispute his veracity. 
He believed that the highest duty man owed to himself 
was self-respect, and this could not be shown with charges 
of evil purpose standing against him undenied. He was 
forgiving in disposition if the opportunity was made in 
good faith, as he believed, by his adversary; otherwise 
he gave no quarter and asked none. He was as gentle as 
a child, modest as a woman, but in a contest was bold and 
fearless as a lion. His diction was almost pure, his 
vocabulary extensive, and his use of synonymous words 



[44] 



Address of Mr. Lloyd, of Missouri 



was such as to make his expression in completed 
sentences a marvel of perfection. His speeches, correctly 
taken by a stenographer, needed no revision, and were 
gems of genuine English. Hv was a man of unusual 
mental attainment. 

In two respects, in my judgment, he had no equal on 
this floor — in biting sarcasm in repartee, and the ability 
of entertaining in a monotone. Many believed him want- 
ing in sympathetic interest for his fellows. This was a 
mistaken opinion. He was a true friend and would make 
more sacrifices for his friends than many others. He was 
retiring in disposition and shrank from association with 
the multitude. His address bordered on timidity, but to 
those with whom he actually came in contact he became 
fond, and with them his attachment constantly grew 
stronger. He had the confidence and respect of all who 
knew him. No man questioned his integrity of purpose. 
He was admired by those who had no sympathy with his 
position on public questions, because his course was 
prompted by a desire to do right. My candid judgment 
is that he was a great man and one of the greatest of his 
time. He had but little opportunity to show constructive 
statesmanship, as he was connected with the minority 
party, but he had those mental attainments which would 
have made him a power in framing legislation. He was 
called upon so frequently to antagonize the dominant 
influence that some concluded that his whole ability lay 
in destructive tactics or attack upon the policies of the 
opposite party. He was partisan in politics, but tolerant 
of the views of others. He had decided convictions, but 
this did not cause him to condemn the personality of 
men. For many of his political adversaries he had the 
highest regard and a lasting feeling of friendship. His 
public career, which lasted for so many years, was so 
important both to the State and the General Government 



[45] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

that time might well be taken to recount his achievements. 
This has been done by others, and it is not my purpose to 
give the details of his remarkable career. 

His life was a worthy example of fidelity to duty, a 
devotion to constituency, and consecration to country that 
is seldom surpassed. His public career, like his private 
life, was almost a model worthy of a complete imitation. 
He had some frailties, as all men have, but there were 
fewer in his life than in the lives of most men. He had 
an exalted conception of duty to his family, and his 
example of devotion to the right is to those surviving him 
a source of comfort. He was a man of decided religious 
convictions, but from causes with which I am not familiar 
was not actively identified with Christian effort. But no 
one questions that he was a good man and that he tried 
faithfully to perform the obligations he owed in all the 
relations of life. 

Mr. De Armond has gone from earth. He is dead. We 
know not why. There is a hereafter which will doubtless 
be free from mystery; a habitation where joy will reign 
supreme; a place where sorrow will never come and 
memorials are not known. Here life in all its environ- 
ments, from the cradle to the grave, however fortunate 
may be the lot, has much of sorrow and gloom, but if the 
Holy Bible is an inspired book, as Mr. De Armond 
believed, then there is another life which may be enjoyed 
in the paradise of God. 



[46] 



Address of Mr. Boohek, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: The poet assures us that great men leave 
their footprints on the " sands of time," and though the 
kind and idolized friend of to-day may he to-morrow 
wrapped in a winding sheet, yet the good he has done 
still lives on and on, permeating the ages, silently, 
quietly affecting society in the interest of moral and 
intellectual progress. 

These thoughts are not new, neither the result of pro- 
found inquiry. " In the midst of life we are in death " 
is a truism bearing the stamp of antiquity. 

An estimable citizen, a generous, kind-hearted neigh- 
bor, a public-spirited, enlightened character, a faithful 
public servant, has been hewn down by the remorseless 
ax of death. 

Those whose good fortune it was to be associated with 
Judge De Armond in public and private intercourse are 
alone capable of fully realizing the extent of our loss. 

While he held numerous official stations, in each of 
which he maintained and enhanced his previous reputa- 
tion, yet the House of Representatives was the place of his 
choice and the theater of his greatest usefulness. Here, 
where his character was best understood and his useful- 
ness and virtues most highly appreciated, his loss as a 
public servant and as a friend is most painfully felt and 
deeply lamented. 

I only pay a debt of honor to the spirit of the dead by 
offering my humble testimonial in addition to what has 
been so appropriately and eloquently expressed by others. 

47 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armoxd 

From our first acquaintance I conceived for him an 
affectionate regard that will always abide with me. 

It enlarges the ideals of life to have known such a man. 
It gives a richer conception of manhood, and to myself 
I hold it a blessing to have known him. 

Our friend, with his rare acquirements, courtly manner, 
and delicate and refined nature, has left us forever. Our 
loved colleague, in whose career no breath of suspicion 
ever assailed his integrity or dimmed the brightness of 
his honor, now sleeps the sleep of death. He will be 
missed in the many spheres of usefulness which he 
adorned. He will be missed in his district, in his State, 
and in the councils of the Nation. He will be missed by 
his host of friends, who admired, respected, and loved 
him; above all, lie will be missed beyond expression in 
his home he loved so well and of which he was the light 
and center. 

In halls of state he sat for many years, 

Like fabled knight, his visage all aglow, 

Receiving, giving — sternly, blow for blow, 

Champion of right; but from eternity's far shore 

Thy spirit will return to join the strife no more. 

Rest, citizen — statesman, rest; thy troubled life is o'er. 



r JS] 



Address of Mr. Parsons, of New York 

Mr. Speaker: Judge De Armond occupied one of the 
most prominent positions in this House. Whenever he 
spoke Members knew that what he said would be worth 
listening to, and would crowd around to hear him. His 
English was perfect and never needed revision, but his 
views on the matter in hand were what particularly 
attracted his colleagues. He was a thoughtful man, and 
his speeches were of the suggestive kind. His views were 
often original and sometimes radical. Some men, because 
of original and radical views, are called cranks, but Judge 
De Armond's views never earned him that sobriquet. 
They called for thought and reflection upon the part of 
each one who heard him. To his speeches he also im- 
parted a fine vein of sarcasm, which was not personally 
offensive, hut was legitimate and effective in debate. 

There was a side to him that rarely, if ever, appeared 
on the floor of this House, but which, none the less, was a 
very important side to him, and had to be learned by 
knowing him off the floor. My acquaintance with him 
started on the trip to the Philippines, made by both of 
us in the summer of 1905 as members of the Taft party. 
On that trip he many times showed a geniality and wit 
that were a delight to all. While ordinarily he appeared 
self-contained and diffident, yet when the occasion 
afforded he would show his rich vein of humor and his 
real love of fun. 

71132—11 4 [49] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

Judge De Armond was, above all things, courageous. He 
thought his thoughts and spoke what he had in his mind, 
no matter what the consequences. He had a sensitive, 
highly strung nature, which prevented him from permit- 
ting insult and himself from doing the thing that was 
mean or unjust. Sad as was the tragedy of his death, 
everyone knows that the chivalry of his nature was such 
that he would have risked his life when opportunity 
offered to save the life of any human being, no matter 
how humble, and, of course, to save the life of a little child 
who was his own descendant. Such an act of chivalry and 
devotion was the triumph of his own character, and 
showed forth its sweetness, strength, and unselfishness. 

The death of such a brilliant man in such a prominent 
position makes us ponder whether it was right that his 
life should have been sacrificed in an attempt to save 
that of a little child whose usefulness is distant and prob- 
lematical. But we do know that the manner of his end 
emphasized the real character of the man and left an 
impression that death in an ordinary manner would not 
have conveyed. 

At Quebec there are two monuments to General Wolfe. 
One of them, which he shares with Montcalm, is reputed 
one of the famous monuments of the world. But it lias 
never appealed to me with the force that does the simple 
shaft on the Plains of Abraham, erected where Wolfe fell, 
and which bears the simple inscription, " Here died 
Wolfe, victorious." As I remember, as I always shall, 
with pleasure and affection, my acquaintance with Judge 
De Armond, I shall regard the manner of his death as best 
showing the purity of his character, for in no better way 
than in trying to save a little child could this distin- 
guished, learned, diffident, finely strung student, thinker, 
statesman, soul of wit, master of sarcasm, and Christian 
gentleman die victorious. 

[50] 



Address of Mr. Henry W. Palmer, of Pennsylvania 

Mr. Speaker: None who ever knew our deceased 
brother can ever forget the horrible manner of his death. 
If anything had been wanting to add to the sorrow of his 
comrades and friends, it is to be found in his unexpected 
and untimely end. At the time he died he had been a 
Member of Congress for 18 years, and was perhaps the 
most accomplished speaker and among the ablest lawyers 
on the Democratic side of the House. In every contest 
that occurred between the parties in Congress he was 
relied upon as the champion of the Democratic cause, and 
he never failed. 

He had the remarkable faculty of being able to speak 
in language fit to print without revision; in point of fact, 
it was his practice never to revise his speeches. As an 
illustration of this facility of speech without preparation, 
a remarkable instance may be found in his address in 
the United States Senate in closing the argument on the 
part of the House in the impeachment proceedings of 
Charles Swayne. As Senator Thurston, who represented 
the defendant, closed his peroration with an invocation 
to the Senate to do justice to his client, Mr. De Armond, 
who, of course, was not aware of what Mr. Thurston 
would say, without a moment's hesitation took up the 
gage of battle in the following language: 

Mr. President, in concluding the argument for the managers 
representing, in the solemn language employed in these impeach- 
ment proceedings, " the House of Representatives and all of the 

[51] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

people of the great United States of America," I shall not endeavor 
to invoke justice from the far-away and stern and inhospitable 
past. I am willing to adopt as the model of the justice which we 
ask that beautiful figure painted in the eloquent peroration of 
the distinguished counsel for the respondent — the adorable ma- 
tron, with pure heart palpitating with love for human kind, ready 
to do justice in kindness and in mercy. Let that be your model of 
justice, and to that spirit of justice we appeal. 

I could wish that such a spirit of justice had been in the court 
of Judge Charles Swayne when the other man, older by 10 years 
than Charles Swayne, with more than 70 years of his life passed, 
stood at the bar of that court presided over by Charles Swayne, 
and in mockery of justice, in contempt and defiance of law, with- 
out regard for human rights, without regard for the courtesy due 
to an attorney, without regard to anything which should prevail 
in a court, was sentenced as a common felon to a common jail, to 
be locked up in a felon's cell. If there had been there then such a 
spirit of justice, if there had been there then any spirit of justice, 
drawn from any age or clime in all the wide world's history or 
expanse, this case would not now be pending before this court to 
determine whether the man, in whose heart resided no such ideal 
and in whose breast blossomed no such spirit of justice, shall be 
removed from the high office which he has disgraced. 

In 1889 or 1800 Charles Swayne was lifted up that rugged moun- 
tain, which counsel so eloquently says he climbed with patience 
and diligence and difficulty — lifted up through the mistaken 
appointment of an honest President, a true patriot, a soldier, and 
a great lawyer. That is the way he got up the mountain; that is 
the way he reached the height; and now we view him upon the 
height, and this Senate is to determine whether he shall remain 
there, or whether he shall be brought down to the level from 
which he ought never have been lifted and from which by no 
exertion or achievement of his own could he ever have risen. 

It is reproduced exactly as delivered, and seems to me 
to be a remarkable instance of bis readiness in debate. 

Notwithstanding bis apparent bitterness in debate, be 
was, in fact, to bis friends, among whom I was proud to 
be numbered, one of the gentlest of men. I have reason 
to deplore his loss and to sympathize with those who were 
dear to him. 

r .V2^ 



Address or Mr. Hammond, of Minnesota 

Mr. Speaker: It was not my good fortune to meet David 
De Armond until I came here as a Member of the Sixtieth 
Congress, but before that time I had heard much of him. 
I had read many of his speeches and many of the collo- 
quies in Congress in which he was engaged. 

It is natural for one somewhat familiar with the 
speeches of an orator, the verses of a poet, or the writ- 
ings of an author to make a mental picture of the 
man whose work alone is known. I thought of David 
De Armond as a dashing, daring cavalier, splendidly 
equipped for the contest — a Sir Lancelot in the strife. 
When I saw him — a small, well-built man, somewhat re- 
served, courteous and gentle — I was surprised. He was 
not the dashing cavalier, witli flying colors, of my fancy. 

My acquaintanceship with Judge De Armond, though 
not of long duration, will never be forgotten. We met 
upon the floor of this Chamber. He visited me in my 
office, and we took several walks together. 

Like many men of rare intellectual strength, he was an 
exceedingly modest man. Powerful, logical, and compel- 
ling in argument and debate, in his private conversations 
he gave the utmost consideration to the opinions of others, 
and if he could not agree with them, dissented most cour- 
teously and, apparently, with reluctance. No man in the 
House, it seems to me, could more clearly and cogently 
present a proposition. His speeches were built upon 

[53] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

foundations carefully placed. It was a pleasure to ob- 
serve the development of his argument, each fundamental 
proposition laid down in the clearest possible form, these 
propositions arranged with artistic nicety. Upon them 
he erected the superstructure of his argument — symmet- 
rical, beautiful, and complete. 

In argument, as in debate, he never seemed to lose his 
head. Always a clear thinker, always giving the impres- 
sion of extraordinary intellectual force, seeing clearly 
from his opening statements to the conclusion he intended 
to reach, he followed closely along the line of pure reason, 
rarely leaving it to pluck flowers of rhetorical adornment. 
His words pleased because they were so well selected and 
so accurately expressed the thought he desired to convey. 
His speeches pleased the ear as the finest sculpture pleases 
the eye of the artist. As a clear thinker, as a logical 
speaker, he had no superior in the House. 

Judge De Armond might be called a partisan, and jet he 
could not support a political principle that he did not 
believe was right. Before he was a partisan he was a 
patriot. The interests of his country were dearer to him 
than the interests of any political party. 

I admired the man, I enjoyed his friendship, and I can 
not forbear to pay this tribute to his memory. 

Powerful, intellectual, convincing in argument, abso- 
lutely without fear, innocent of hypocrisy or deception, 
with the keenest sense of honor, a gladiator in combat, 
as gentle as a child, and as modest as a woman, he was 
one upon whose pure, white life all may look and truly 
say, " There lived a man." 



[54] 



Address of Mr. Rucker, 01 Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: Missouri has contributed to our common 
country her full quota of distinguished men whose valiant 
services, in peace and in war, are parts of the imperish- 
able history of the United States. Citizens by birth or 
adoption of that great State have won fame, honor, and 
everlasting renown in literature, science, heroism, and 
statesmanship. 

Our hearts fill with pardonable pride as we reflect upon 
the long list of Missourians whose achievements have 
immortalized their names, perpetuated their memories, 
and left to the world an indestructible legacy of inesti- 
mable value. While proud of their brilliant attainments, 
jealous of the inheritance they left us, and rejoicing in 
the glory their lives shed upon our State, we are not un- 
mindful of the debt we owe our sister States for having 
given us many of our greatest men. 

Judge David A. De Armond, whose life, character, and 
distinguished public services we commemorate to-day, 
was a native of the State of Pennsylvania. In his early 
manhood he removed to Iowa. Allured by the wondrous 
possibilities of Missouri, her genial climate, her wealth 
of mineral resources, and her splendid citizenship which 
had attracted the genius, the intelligence, and the best 
manhood of the older States, he left Iowa about the close 
of the civil war and chose Missouri for the scene of his 
life work. 

[55] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

Judge De Armond was most generously endowed by 
nature. To his superb natural abilities he added the 
fruits of years of labor devoted to the acquisition of 
knowledge. 

He was a man of extensive learning, quick discernment, 
clear conception, positive conviction, unwavering judg- 
ment, and, best of all, exemplary character. 

In his chosen profession — the law — he rapidly rose to 
eminence and distinction. Appreciating his unsurpassed 
knowledge of the law and gladly confiding in the integrity 
of his character, his fellow-citizens called him from the 
pursuits of private life to the discharge of the more try- 
ing duties of public office. On the circuit bench and as 
a commissioner of the supreme court of the State he 
elevated and honored the judiciary of Missouri. 

Judge De Armond was elected to the Fifty-second Con- 
gress and to each succeeding Congress. As a Member of 
this great body, I am inclined to think, he rendered the 
most valuable service to his country. Always the peer 
of any Member, he was accorded a recognition and ex- 
erted an influence which made him a national character, 
respected, admired, loved, and honored by all. 

On the morning of November 23, 1909, the sad intelli- 
gence of the tragic death of Judge De Armond was flashed 
across the country, and the Nation bowed her head in 
grief. 

In his death the Republic lost one of its purest and 
most patriotic statesmen, the State one of her most gifted 
and distinguished citizens, and the family a devoted and 
affectionate husband and father. 

To his bereaved family let me bear witness in tender- 
ness and sympathy that our tears have mingled with 
their tears, that their sorrow is our sorrow, and that their 
loss is our loss. 



[56] 



Address of Mr. Pucker, of Missouri 



Let us remember our departed colleague, Judge David 
A. De Armond, scholar, lawyer, jurist, statesman, ;is one 
who in all the trials and vicissitudes of life followed fear- 
lessly the pathway of duty, adjusted the ambitions and 
conduct of his life to the standard of right, and one whose 
persuasive voice was ever raised, whether on the hustings 
or in this great legislative hall 

In praise of the right, in blame of the wrong. 



[57] 



Address of Mr. Reid, of Arkansas 

Mr. Speaker: Having enjoyed the advantage, as well as 
the honor, of membership upon the Committee on the 
Judiciary with our late friend and distinguished col- 
league, Judge De Armond, and having in that relation 
come to know something of his character and qualities, 
I am prompted to add a few words in his eulogy, though 
it be in truth but a repetition of what has already been so 
ably and beautifully said. It chanced that he was among 
my first acquaintances in this body, due to circumstances 
which I thought, perhaps, gave me an earlier insight into 
his temperament and capabilities than I might otherwise 
have acquired by much longer association. It matters not 
what the circumstances were, but it disclosed to me that 
his heart was kind and sympathetic, and I had afterwards 
to learn of that reserved and unobtrusive nature that 
might have been mistaken for indifference by one who 
knew him no better. 

The custom of eulogizing those who are summoned 
from their life's work while holding membership here 
affords not only an appropriate and befitting hour for the 
expression of the sentiments of affection and esteem 
which those of us remaining cherished for our colleague 
who has gone, but it occasions, also, wholesome and 
profitable reflection upon those qualities of mind and 
heart which distinguish the individual from the multi- 
tude and ordain for him position either noble or ignoble 
among his fellow-men. 



[58] 



Address 6f Mr. Reid, of Arkansas 

The ancient philosopher said that no man could be con- 
sidered to have been truly happy in this life until he was 
dead; and it is equally true that until death no estimate 
of a man's character can be said to be entirely free from 
error and misconception. It is only after he has ceased 
to be a factor among the living that disinterested and 
unbiased judgment upon his merits may be pronounced. 
With death alone comes that gentle peace that bids the 
envious tongue be silent; slander and prejudice are 
robbed of their victim, and the jargon and clamor of 
partisan controversy is hushed. 

Mr. Speaker : It is no small evidence of a man's worth 
to be a Member of this the greatest legislative assembly 
on earth, the popular branch of the Congress of the 
United States. When the many thousands, whose con- 
sent, whose confidence, and whose commission must be 
held by him who enters here, unite in his selection, it may 
be said, as a rule, that he is not wanting in those high 
qualities which should characterize a representative of so 
great a constituency. This is no trivial distinction and 
no small evidence of merit. How much more may be 
said, then, of him who not only holds the unfaltering 
confidence of his constituents, Menially expressed through 
a long number of years, but attains and holds also highest 
rank and prestige here. To have done this is no less 
than to have guided the destinies of a nation, to have 
helped to make and write the history of the world. Such 
men have been regarded throughout all time as examples 
for the emulation of their fellows. Their lives furnish 
alike the subject for the aged philosopher's meditation 
and the hope and courage that stimulates the ambitious 
aspirations of youth. The world has found the study of 
such a character to be profitable, and when his career 
has been ended, when the last page in his life's volume 
has been written without blot or blemish, other men turn 



[59] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

eagerly to the narrative in the hope of finding recorded 
there the priceless precepts by which* he ascended and 
conquered. 

Let me say to him who would thus advert to the life of 
David De Armond that he will find no maxim of easy 
adoption. He accomplished by no ride or process which 
may be lightly or pleasantly applied. While not wanting 
in cordiality toward friends, he made no pretense to those 
qualities that command the largest circle of acquaint- 
ances. He was a stranger to those arts and wiles by 
which men sometimes gain promotion through the social 
relations of life. There was in him neither artifice nor 
pretense. He never courted. He never flattered. He 
never sought to invite applause, and would have more 
than scorned to advertise. Whatever recognition he ob- 
tained was a concession to merit, and to merit alone. 
He presents to us a study of unusual and engaging inter- 
est. He attained and held his high position here because 
he earned and deserved it. He possessed, in a super- 
lative degree, certain peculiar faculties which nature has 
not indiscriminately bestowed. He was purely and ex- 
clusively intellectual. He advanced by the stern, inflexi- 
ble processes of reason and logic. Before the impassioned 
appeal of the orator, the brilliant exhibition and display 
of eloquence and rhetoric, he neither retreated nor sur- 
rendered. He never invoked it to his own aid nor suf- 
fered it to swerve him from his course when exercised by 
another. He accepted nothing that did not commend 
itself to his calm and deliberate judgment, and neither 
himself sought nor expected to maintain position by 
methods less exacting. He possessed in a remarkable 
degree the power of selecting words and phrases that 
expressed and conveyed his ideas with unerring exact- 
ness and precision. He never found need for metaphor 



[60J 



Address of Mh. Reid, of Arkansas 



and figure. High-sounding superlatives and glittering 

periods can not be found among Ins utterances. 

Versed in history and literature, lie never sought to 
lead by allusion to its charms. His method was to impel 
bv force of reason and fact unadorned. He despised pre- 
tense and fraud. He was a master of philippic, and woe 
to him whose breast was exposed to his shafts of irony 
and scorn. With pitiless and inexorable sarcasm he 
stripped disguise and dissimulation of its mask, and his . 
tongue cut like steel and vitriol. His statement of a 
proposition was at once accurate and comprehensive and 
exclusive. When he had spoken he had said neither too 
much nor too little. He said nothing that could have 
been omitted. He left nothing to be said. His whole na- 
ture intellectual, the uncertain factors of emotion, preju- 
dice, or passion never intruded upon his deliberations 
to render his conclusions doubtful or uncertain. His style 
of delivery was peculiarly his own. He never gesticu- 
lated. He never emphasized with stamp of foot or shake 
of head. There was no reddening of the face nor labored 
modulation of the voice. No sentence was loudly ac- 
claimed above another. His choice of word and clear 
and orderly array of phrase and fact gave accentuation 
effective and intense. Lnimpassioned and deliberate, he 
never stormed nor labored. Without notes, without ref- 
erence to authorities, and without reading from books, he 
spoke unfalteringly from the plenitude of his own re- 
sources. He never engaged in light or trivial contro- 
versy. It was the supreme moment, the emergency, the 
crisis, that called his ever-ready and dextrous faculties 
into play. When he arose silence fell upon his hearers, 
and none denied him an audience or attention. With the 
full force and potency of honest conviction and superb 
moral courage he assailed his adversary and defended 
his position. There was not the trace of the demagogue 



[61] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

about him. With the highest regard for the will of his 
constituents and a profound sense of the obligations 
which a representative capacity imposes, he yet knew no 
relation and acknowledged no law that required him to 
surrender his reason or throttle the voice of his con- 
science. In his fidelity to truth and to trust he was as 
inflexible as oak and as unpurchasable as immortal life. 
His State and his district were proud of him, his constitu- 
ents loved and honored him, and none had better repre- 
sentation in this hall. His people, his party, his country 
have suffered greatly in his loss, and will cherish his 
memory unforgotten. 



[62] 



Address of Mr. Hamlin, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: We have met here to-day to pay our 
respects to the memory of one whom all respected and, 
those of us who were fortunate enough to know him 
well, loved. 

Judge David A. De Armond was serving his tenth term 
in this House when, on the 23d day of November, 1909, the 
angel of death came in a chariot of fire and served upon 
him that awful summons which struck terror to the hearts 
of 90,000,000 of people and bowed in deep and sincere 
sorrow those of his comrades here and his many friends 
throughout the Nation. 

Others who served with him here longer than myself 
have and will speak more in extenso of the splendid 
work he did for his country as a legislator. To me Judge 
De Armond was exceedingly interesting. I knew him 
well before I became a Member of this House, and from 
my first acquaintance with him I had unlimited confi- 
dence in his ability and integrity. 

I often went to him for advice and always found him 
ready and willing to aid me. He was retiring and modest 
to such a degree that it impressed many people who knew 
him only casually that there surrounded him a circle 
within which no one could enter, but we who knew him 
well know that that was a mistaken impression. He was 
not a man who was ready to exchange confidences with 
everyone, yet he evidently enjoyed greatly the oppor- 
tunity to sit down with his friends and discuss matters 

[63] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

of public interest, and no one could hold these confer- 
ences with him without realizing that they had learned 
much, for he had a wonderful fund of information. He 
was a wise and safe counselor. He was sincere, he was 
just, he was fair. 

He was not an orator in the sense that he could, by the 
power of his eloquence, compel men to follow him; in 
fact. I think it can be said of him that he did not lead. 
He seemed to get behind and drive and, with the power of 
his faultless diction, his unanswerable logic, his incisive, 
pricking, spear-point-like sarcasm, compel men to go in 
the direction he would have them go. 

I think, perhaps, that his splendid abilities shone best 
in a running debate. 

A friend of mine on the other side of the Chamber 
told me that on one occasion when one of the strongest 
debaters on the majority side was making an argument 
Mr. De Armond interrupted and asked some questions, 
the tendency of each of which being to uncover the fal- 
lacy of the argument of his opponent. The gentleman 
occupying the floor realized where he was being driven 
by the clear-cut interrogations, and refused to be further 
interrupted, but Mr. De Armond propounded his question 
anyway, and a friend of the gentleman making the speech 
asked, "Why do you not answer that question?" 
He said, " I could answer that question all right, but God 
only knows what the next question would be, so I refused 
to be further interrupted." 

However, he was neither ambitious nor domineering; 
on the contrary, he was apparently timid, reserved, and 
modest. He was honest, able, and fearless. There may 
have been some, and doubtless were, who did not love 
him; but all admired him and appreciated his splendid 
abilities. There are those in this House now who, if they 
would but expose their political armors, could show signs 

[64 



Address of Mr. Hamlin, of Missouri 

where the forensic spear of David Albaugh De Ahmond 
entered with unerring certainty, but those wounds will 
always be found in the breastplate, never in the back, 
for he always fought to the face and never wasted 
ammunition on a living adversary. 

But he is gone. Mr. Speaker, 1 can scarcely realize that 
fact. Many times this winter I have, when the fight has 
waxed hot, found myself intuitively casting my eyes over 
toward his old seat, expecting, for the moment, to see 
him rise in his place and turn his powerful batteries of 
logic and sarcasm upon the opposition — weapons which 
have struck terror to the hearts of his political adver- 
saries on many occasions in this Chamber. 

While he fought relentlessly for what be thought to be 
right, he never fought maliciously. I never heard him 
speak harshly of any man in my life. If he ever per- 
mitted such feelings to enter his heart he succeeded in 
concealing them. Toward his associates he was reserved, 
to the extent that he was sometimes accused of being 
unsympathetic; yet we know that he had a heart full 
of love. 

He did not try, and perhaps could not if he had tried, 
to conceal his love for children. He loved his little grand- 
son with a passionate devotion; and God was good to 
him. He permitted him, in the moment of death, to clasp 
in his arms the one he loved better than his own life. 

Mr. Speaker, these occasions serve us well. They serve 
to remind us that in the midst of life there is death. It is 
simply a question of who will be the next. It may be 
you; it may be I. God only knows. Solomon said: 

As for man, his days are as the grass; as a flower of the field, so 
he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it and it is gone; and 
the place thereof shall know it no more. 

This only we know, that our destiny throughout eter- 
nity is fixed by our conduct here on earth. May we not 

71432°-!! 5 [65] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

well pause here in the midst of our multitudinous duties 
and give consideration lo this, the greatest question ever 
presented to man? 

We can not long hope to escape this summons, for — 

Our life is but a dream; 
Our time, as a stream 

Glides swiftly away, 
And the fugitive moment 

Refuses to stay. 

The arrow is flown, 
The moments are gone; 

The millennial year 
Rushes on to our view, 

And eternity is here. 



[66] 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: I do not feel qualified to speak of Judge 
De Armond as I would like to. 

While I have known him for many years, our close 
acquaintance and friendship is covered by the period of 
our service together in this body. I lirst knew him by 
reputation while he was a member of the Missouri Shite 
Senate, serving four years, beginning in 1878. He was a 
conspicuous member of that body. His rich mental en- 
dowments and ability as a lawyer gave him great in- 
fluence and prominence in its deliberations. His reputa- 
tion was State wide. 

My personal acquaintance with him began in 1882. In 
that year I was elected a member of the house of repre- 
sentatives. I became acquainted with the hold-over sen- 
ators who had served witli Judge De Armond. They 
entertained toward him feelings of profound respect and 
admiration. 1 am somewhat familiar with the personnel 
of the General Assembly of Missouri for the past 30 years, 
and I believe I may truthfully say that no senator or 
representative during that period served the State with 
more conspicuous ability than he. For several years 
prior to 1885 the docket of the supreme court had been 
congested. It took three and four years to reach cases 
for hearing. Much just impatience was felt by the bar 
and by litigants. All efforts to secure an increase of the 
judges of the supreme court had failed. To relieve the sit- 
uation, a bill was framed creating a supreme court com- 
mission. It was introduced at the session of the general 
assembly beginning in January, 1885. I was then a 

[67] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

member of the house and actively supported the bill. It 
was freely stated that if the bill became a law ex-Senator 
De Armond would be one of the commissioners, and that 
fact no doubt had much to do with strengthening the bill 
and securing its passage. He became one of the com- 
missioners, as anticipated, and during his service ren- 
dered a number of opinions. They fully justified the high 
opinion of his legal attainments entertained by his 
friends. Those who knew him well will agree with me 
that his tastes were judicial, rather than legislative. 

In 1886 he was elected judge of his circuit and served 
until 1890, when he was elected to this body. 

While on the circuit bench Judge De Armond cherished 
the ambition to serve as a member of the supreme court 
of the State. If I am not mistaken, he was a candidate 
for the nomination in 1888, and with other aspirants was 
defeated by Judge Shepard Barclay, who was nominated 
and elected in that year. I have no doubt had his ambi- 
tion in that direction been gratified his service on the 
supreme court bench would have been marked by great 
ability and in keeping with the best traditions of that 
distinguished tribunal. 

He possessed a mind of rare analytical power. He was 
a well-read, thoroughly trained lawyer, and a model nisi 
prius judge. His knowledge of constitutional law made 
his service on the Judiciary Committee of this House of 
great value. He investigated constitutional and legal 
questions with thoroughness, and his opinions were un- 
tainted by partisanship. When the question of the eligi- 
bility of Senator Knox for the office of Secretary of State 
in President Taffs Cabinet was under consideration his 
terse and clear exposition of the constitutional question 
involved was listened to with intense interest, and set- 
tled the question in the minds of many who were waver- 
ing. Judge De Armond was a formidable antagonist in 



ros;: 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of Missouri 

debate. His logic was convincing, his wit and sarcasm 
keen and incisive. He was a master of sarcasm. A fine 
example of it is shown in his speech in March, 1908, when 
the House was considering the bill making appropriations 
for fortifications in the Philippine Islands. He said: 

Why not raise over in the Philippines, instead of seeking in 

other lands, the necessary quantum of barons and dukes and 
counts and other titled bipeds'? By choice I say " raise," when I 
might say "rear." Now, this would be a domestic industry 
against which, it seems to me, there ought to be no objection. 
There would be no trouble in negotiating with our homemade 
dukes, as, with our plant established in the Philippines for turn- 
ing out hombres with titles, we could fix our own schedules and 
ourselves determine what we shall pay for the privilege of ex- 
porting, in this instance, to the Philippines such of our daughters 
as we desire to part with, accompanied by a right handsome dot 
in the way of consideration for a title of nobility of some grade 
or another thus brought into the family. 

Now, why could we not turn the Philippines to account in this 
way? Why contribute of our millions to titled gentlemen in 
Europe in order to dispose of the daughters of our American 
millionaires*? Why longer suffer ourselves to be held up and 
robbed, even to make a countess or some other sort of titled lady 
out of the daughter of an American plutocrat? It will be cheaper, 
far, to bring up our own titled gentry under our own control, and 
I think it would be in harmony — I say it with some diffidence, 
because I do not exactly know — I think it would be in harmony 
with the protective policy to which our friends across the aisle 
are devoted. 

Said the very able Washington correspondent of the 
Kansas City Star of him, following his death: 

As a master of sarcasm Mr. De Armond ranked with John J. 
Ingalls and Thomas B. Reed. Telling of one of Mr. De Armond's 
speeches Savoyard, that keen analyst of public men, said: " De 
Armond. of Missouri, is like the Black Knight of Ashby— he ap- 
pears when least expected; and when he strikes, he hits to hurt. 
His sarcasm is as cold, as cruel, as merciless as steel, and only the 
victim of it can realize the torture that follows his blow." 



L69] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

Many regarded Judge De Armond as a bitter partisan. 
To the casual observer he may have seemed so. He was 
sincere and honest in his convictions, and on occasion 
enforced them with all the force and power of his splen- 
did abilities. He was a straightforward and manly an- 
tagonist. He believed in the principles of Democracy 
with all the intensity of his nature. He viewed every 
question from the standpoint of the public welfare. Poli- 
tics with him was not a game in which honors and emolu- 
ments were the only stake. He regarded public office as 
the opportunity to serve, not exploit, the people. Special 
privilege, favoritism under sanction of law, were hateful 
to him. Equal rights for all and special privileges to none 
was more than a high-sounding form of words to him, 
and during a service of nearly twenty years in this body 
he gave expression by his voice and votes of his loyalty 
lo that maxim. 

He was held in high esteem by the representatives of 
the press. As a striking illustration of his fairness to his 
political opponents, and particularly toward the present 
administration, the following is an example: 

Representative De Armond impressed everyone who knew him 
with his integrity of purpose and his fairness. In the progress of 
the tariff debate last spring he became greatly concerned for two 
reasons — he feared the new law would add to the burdens of the 
poor and that it would impair the public confidence in President 
Taft, for whom lie had the warmest admiration and affection. 

One day last summer he got to talking about the matter in his 
room in the House Office Building with a reporter for the Star. 
He knew, of course, that he was not to be quoted. But his death 
removes the reason for secrecy, and the conversation illustrates 
admirably the fine traits of his character, for he was a Demo- 
cratic leader talking about Republican policies and a Republican 
President. 

After this lapse of time it is not possible, of course, to give the 
conversation verbatim. But it made a vivid impression on the 



[70] 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of Missouri 

listener and in substance it is correct. The conversation took 
place, it should be added, early in the summer, before President 
Taft had taken any part in modifying the tariff bill. 

" Of course," Judge De Abmond said, " I understand that a bad 
tariff bill will make party capital for us Democrats. From a 
partisan standpoint I suppose some people would be inclined to 
say the worse the bill the better for us. But I can not sympathize 
with that view. We are all Americans and we want what will lie 
best for the whole people. 

" I had hoped that the bill would carry out the platform pledge 
and would be really a progressive measure that would lighten 
some of the burdens of the people, particularly of the poor. But 
I have been greatly disappointed. So far as I can judge, the spe- 
cial interests are in the saddle as usual, and the bill which they 
have framed will give the country no relief. That seems to me a 
national calamity, and I can get no comfort in reflecting that it 
may help the Democratic Party." 

"What do you imagine will be the feeling of the people toward 
the President as a result of the bill? Will they be disposed to 
hold him personally responsible and to blame him if the law is 
unpopular? " 

'" 1 tear so," he answered in that deliberate way of his — all his 
sentences came with deliberation and with a fine choice of words 
that only a stenographic report could do justice to — " I fear so. 
And that distresses me, too. I have long been interested in Presi- 
dent Taft's career. When he was Secretary of War I accompanied 
his party to the Philippines, and I became well acquainted with 
him at that time. He is essentially a great man, a man of splendid 
intellect, of unusual force, and of absolute honesty. 

" But, for some reason that I don't understand and which I fear 
the people won't understand, he is allowing Congress to put up a 
bill to him which is a sham, and he isn't protesting. 

" Xow, I know that the President is not lacking in courage and 
intelligence, and I feel confident that there must be some reason 
for his attitude which doesn't appear on the surface. But peo- 
ple who don't know him as I do — what will they think?" 

Judge De Abmond paused in real distress, leaned back in his 
chair, looked out of the window for a moment, and then went on: 

" Sometimes I have thought of going up to the White House 
and telling the President that I was coming to him, not as a Mem- 
ber of Congress or as a Democrat, but merely as an old friend, to 



[71! 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

talk over the situation and to tell him that some of these fellows 
here — keen, unscrupulous men they are — were putting him in a 
false light before the public." 

" Why don't you?" 

" Well, I have been sorely tempted to. But, don't you see, I am 
a Democratic Congressman, a member of the opposition. I have 
felt that the President, on that account, would discount any- 
thing I might say — not consciously, you understand. I believe he 
knows me too well for that. But at bottom he would feel that my 
prejudices were warping my ideas. So I have never gone to him." 

Magnanimity, the statesmanlike view — these were the striking 
aspects of his character to the men who met him personally. And 
one newspaper man in particular can testify that, after discussing 
petty, trivial questions of patronage or district politics with cer- 
tain Congressmen it was like going out of a stuffy room into the 
bracing air of the open fields to go to De Armond, who was never 
interested in trivialities and whose primary concern was the 
national welfare. 

But I need not dwell longer on the character of this 
distinguished Missourian. He acted well his part in all 
the relations of life, and left a name that should he a 
priceless heritage to his children. He was an honor to his 
State and an ornament in this hod}'. We deeply deplore 
his untimely and tragic death. Death came to him like a 
thief in the night. It came in awful form. We can only 
surmise what his feelings and emotions were when, with 
his grandson in his arms, he realized that death was 
inevitable for both. 

The only words he is known to have uttered after he 
realized the peril that was impending were of assurance 
to the dear boy's cry, "Grandpa, get me out of here!" 
were, " Never mind, son, I'll get you out." 

The way may have seemed open for the instant, but 
soon closed forever, and the beautiful home, that he loved 
so well, became his funeral pyre. 



[12] 



Address of Mr. Alexander, of Missouri 



We are constrained to say of him, with Wordsworth: 

One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists — one only — an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 



[73] 



Address of Mr. Small, of North Carolina 

Mr. Speaker : After listening this afternoon to the many 
beautiful tributes which have been paid to the memory 
of the distinguished statesman from Missouri, I hesitate 
in giving expression to my feeble remarks in tribute to 
his memory. I can only bring sincerity and admiration 
for the career and life of this genuine man clothed in 
such simple words as may occur to me upon this sad 
occasion. In reflecting to-day upon Judge De Armond, 
there came to my mind a similar occasion on January 
20, 1907, when the Members of this House had gathered 
to pay tribute to the memory of the late Senator Bate, 
of Tennessee. Among others who participated in the 
exercises, there lingers in my memory the recollection of 
the sentiments which he uttered, and from which I shall 
ask the privilege to read just a brief paragraph : 

It is very difficult to speak of the living justly, kindly, and 
bravely. It is even more difficult to speak of the dead as real facts, 
tempered by mercy and charity, and yet guided and directed by 
courage and honesty, would suggest. As we come to the portals of 
the grave, as we bend over the bier of the departed, as we linger 
about the mound covered with flowers, under which rests him 
who was but no longer is of this world, judgment seems to sur- 
render control, moderation to give way to extravagance, and we 
too often lose ourselves in an infinitude of meaningless phrases 
which sound and roll but signify nothing. 

I thought then that these sentiments typified in large 
degree one of the marked characteristics of Judge De 

[74] 



Address of Mr. Small, of North Carolina 

Armond. His intellectual integrity and his devotion to 
truth was such that upon all occasions, even in the pres- 
ence of the dead and against the temptation of strong 
sentiments, he was candid and truthful. If he were lis- 
tening to us this afternoon, and perhaps he is, and could 
express his wishes, he would wish that we speak of him 
just as he was in life. 

He was not of a demonstrative nature, and yet he was 
loyal in his friendships, and had a keen appreciation of 
the strong points of those with whom he associated. On 
the contrary, he rarely indulged in criticism, and only 
when some principle or some injustice was involved. His 
chief strength as a man was his acute and analytical and 
well-trained mind. His mental processes were like the 
working of a well-ordered machine and absolutely under 
his control. It was always interesting to observe him on 
his feet in debate. His ideas were clear and orderly, and 
in simple words he analyzed a proposition and over- 
whelmed it with satire, or attacked it with magnificent 
argument. 

When 1 entered upon my public service in Congress in 
1899. it so chanced that I lived at the same hotel with 
Judge De Armond, and at the same place lived his devoted 
friend, the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Jones], who has just paid a deserved tribute. I recall 
very well his passing in and out of the hotel, tarrying only 
for a moment, and mingling only slightly with the guests. 
How difficult, I thought, it was to become acquainted with 
this strange man of reflective and cold exterior. Yet after 
a lapse of a few months, when I had occasion to go to him 
upon some serious matter, he received me so kindly, so 
graciously, and was so generous with his advice and as- 
sistance that from this time I came to know him as he 
was — not as reflected by his absorbed manner and quiet 
demeanor, but as a man having within him the love of 

75 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

the humanities and a disposition at all times to give out 
of his abundant stores of knowledge and of wisdom all 
that he possessed for a friend. During the years that 
have since elapsed there will be no more pleasant or ten- 
der recollection than the association which I enjoyed with 
Judge De Armond. 

Mr. Speaker, in all the lines of public service, local, 
State, or national, I do not believe there is one where the 
standard is higher, or ought to be higher, than it is in the 
House of Representatives. Removed, as many of us are, 
far from our constituents, we may, if we so desire, forget 
at times the sacred trust which we have assumed, and 
Members of this House are often called upon to exercise 
all the strength of character and manhood which they 
possess in order that they may uniformly walk in the 
straight and narrow path of public duty. He must 
possess high ideals, and he must have the strength and the 
courage to follow them. I indulge in no vain words when 
I say that if the inner life history of every past Member 
of this House could be written, we would find that no 
man possessed higher ideals or strove to follow them 
with greater fidelity than this distinguished Member. 

When I entered upon service in this House, I recall that 
the first important public question was upon the resolu- 
tion debarring Mr. Roberts, a Representative-elect from 
Utah, from taking the oath of office and assuming his 
duties. There had been much discussion throughout the 
country regarding the status and rights of this gentleman, 
and the press and the women of the country had largely 
arrayed themselves against his admission to the House. 
The attitude of Judge De Armond is a matter of legislative 
history. No Member of the House had greater sympathy 
with the moral aspects of this question than he, and yet 
against this public storm of protest he followed the dic- 
tates of his own conscience and judgment. Having de- 

[76] 



Address of Mr. Small, of North Carolina 

cided that Mr. Roberts was entitled under the Constitu- 
tion to have the oath administered and become a prima 
facie Member of this House, he did not hesitate for a 
moment in taking his position. He made a speech in 
opposition to the resolution, which was a masterpiece in 
analysis and argument. For clearness of expression, for 
logic, for knowledge of the fundamental law, and for 
courage, it constituted a model which Members of the 
House in the future may well adopt when an emergency 
shall confront them in the discharge of their public duty. 
If I may inject a personal statement, I shall never regret 
that I was among the thirty who followed his leadership 
on that occasion, and ever afterwards when I desired a 
candid statement upon a public question or a clear ex- 
pression of the law, I knew that I could go to him with 
the satisfaction that he would speak the truth as he was 
given to see it. While at times we may have separated 
upon public questions, yet whenever a fundamental prob- 
lem was involved it was always my pleasure to seek his 
advice, and usually to follow it. 

He was utterly unselfish in the discharge of public 
duties. He knew no other ideal of service except that 
which represented the best interests of his constituency 
and the American people. No interests, it mattered not 
how great or influential, and no cause, it mattered not to 
what extent it appeared to be backed by popular clamor 
and public sentiment, could ever swerve him from what 
he considered to be the path of truth and wisdom. 

In coming years when the young man shall enter the 
public service and shall seek for guidance and civic cour- 
age, he will find no more illustrious exemplar of the true 
and tried public servant than that of Judge De Armond, 
to whose memory we are to-day paying a feeble tribute. 



[77] 



Address oi Mr. Murphy, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: It is appointed that all men must die. 
Neither the rich nor the poor nor the high nor the low 
can escape. Life is not measured by its length, but by its 
breadth. A man may live in his narrow cell, hide his 
light, and care for himself alone, or he may fulfill his 
mission on earth and let his light shine and serve his 
country and his fellow man. 

The corner stone of a well-regulated life is love — love 
of country. The second great commandment is to love 
thy neighbor as thyself, and there cau be no greater exhi- 
bition of this than that a man will lay down his life to 
save others or in the attempt to save human life. 

Another indispensable element in life is charity; not 
alone in giving, but in forbearance, lending a helping 
hand to those who may need help by way of counsel, 
advice, or what not. 

Another essential ingredient is faith — faith in your 
fellow men as well as in your Creator. 

It was my pleasure to meet David A. De Armoxd on the 
day I was sworn in as a Member of the Fifty-ninth Con- 
gress. He possessed all of these virtues and lived them 
day by day, and gave his life in trying to save his loved 
one. 

The names of some men are written in history and in 
song. Some are preserved by invention and otherwise. 
These, Mr. Speaker, will decay and perish and in time be 
forgotten ; but David A. De Armond wrote his name on the 
hearts of men and in the hearts of 90,000,000 of his coun- 
trymen, where it will remain so long as the world shall 
stand. 

[78] 



Address of Mr. Sulzer, of New York 

Mr. Speaker: The sad and tragic death of Congressman 
De Armond shocked the entire country, darkened the sky 
of the grand old Commonwealth of Missouri, and brought 
heartfelt grief and irreparable sorrow to his relatives and 
his friends throughout the land he loved so much and 
served so faithfully. The terrible catastrophe that over- 
whelmed him has been graphically pictured in the public 
press and eloquently described to-day in these memorial 
services, and yet I venture the assertion that the more 
we think about it the harder it is for us to fully realize 
its terrible suddenness, and the more difficult it becomes 
to fittingly describe in words the frightful calamity. In 
the darkness of the night, as he was quietly sleeping in 
his home, without a moment's warning the angry flames 
burst out. Awakened from his sleep, De Armond hears 
the cry of his trusting grandson. He hastens to save the 
bewildered and loving child. 

The pitiless fire burns too fast, consumes them, and 
only the charred and unrecognizable remains are left to 
tell the tragical story, one of the saddest and most de- 
plorable in all our history. We mourn to-day with those 
who mourn because they loved this good and kindly man; 
we grieve to-day with those who grieve because they 
admired this just and brave and truly great man, this 
loyal friend and faithful servant of the people. 

David A. De Armond was born March 18. 1814. in Blair 
County, Pa. Let me briefly tell the story of his life and 
his struggles, and of his success. It illustrates again the 
opportunities of the Republic. It is another brilliant page 
in the annals of America, the land of plod and progress, 

[79] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

and should be read and pondered over by every hopeful 
and ambitious schoolboy in our country. He was the 
oldest of a family of six children. He came of good old 
Revolutionary stock. 

His father, James De Armond, was born in Northum- 
berland County, Pa., in the year 1790, and died at Green- 
field, Mo., at the advanced age of 95 years. His grand- 
father fought in many of the battles of the Revolution. 
The father married Catherine Albaugh, the youngest of 
a family of 13 children. Her parents were Marylanders, 
and settled in Blair County, Pa., at an early day. She was 
born in the year 1815, and died in the year 1904 at the 
home of her son, David, at Butler, Mo., at the ripe old 
age of 89 years. 

Congressman De Armond spent his early days on a 
farm, doing farm work, at the foot of the Allegheny 
Mountains, not far from the source of the Juniata River, 
in the State of Pennsylvania, and on this farm his parents 
lived until 1866, when they removed to Davenport, Iowa. 
His early advantages were few, but he made the most of 
them. He was always studious and industrious. He was 
a worker — determined to get on and succeed. 

He was educated in the public schools, and then in 
Dickinson Seminary, at Williamsport, Pa., graduating 
with high honors in the year 1866. Prior to entering 
Dickinson Seminary he taught a country school for sev- 
eral years. On graduating, however, he joined his par- 
ents in Davenport, Iowa, began to read law in the office 
of Lane & Day, and was admitted to the bar in 1867, at 
Davenport, where he continued to reside for about two 
years, when he removed to Greenfield, county of Dade, 
in the Ozark regions of southwestern Missouri. Here he 
practiced law; here he married; here he continued to live 
until the year 1883. While living in Greenfield, Mo., he 
was elected a State senator in 1878 from a Republican 

[80] 



Address or Mr. Sii.zer, oe New York 



district, and served four years in the upper branch of 
the legislature of his State. He earned an enviable and 
State-wide reputation as a State senator by his honesty, 
his capability, and his fearless energy. His name is asso- 
ciated with many good laws passed during this period. 
In 1883 he moved to Butler, the county seat of Bales 
County, Mo., where he continued to reside until his sad 
and tragic death. 

In 1881 he was a Democratic presidential elector, and 
voted for (hover Cleveland for President. In 1885 he be- 
came a member of the Missouri supreme court commis- 
sion, and rendered important service as a distinguished 
jurist to his State. His opinions hold high rank among 
the ablest and most erudite decisions of that eminent judi- 
cial tribunal. In 1886 he was nominated and elected, 
without opposition, circuit judge for the district of which 
Bates County is a part, and filled the position with marked 
ability for four years. He had a judicial mind and won 
much fame as an upright and impartial judge. In the fall 
of 1890 he was nominated and elected to the Fifty-second 
Congress, and reelected to the Fifty-third, the Fifty- 
fourth, the Fifty-fifth, the Fifty-sixth, the Fifty-seventh, 
the Fifty-eighth, the Fifty-ninth, the Sixtieth, and the 
Sixty-first Congresses, without substantial opposition, 
serving continuously from the 4th day of March, 1891, 
until his lamentable death on the 23d day of November, 
1909. Splendid record; magnificent career. What an 
example he has left to his colleagues and to the people 
of the country! 

This public service rendered to Ins native land by 
Judge De Armond in the Congress of the United Stales 
is now history — a part of the imperishable annals of 
America— a bright and instructive chapter of sincere 
effort, of earnest endeavor, and of successful accomplish- 
ment in the legislative records of the United States. It 

71432°— « — o [81] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

will live as long as the Republic shall endure. He was 
preeminently a constructive statesman. He did not tear 
down. He built up. His mission was not to destroy, but 
to save and make better. His mind was acute, ever alert, 
and always analytical. He was judicial and logical. He 
was able and honest; sincere and industrious; a splendid 
debater, an indefatigable worker, and an orator of rare 
gifts and brilliant powers. 

He will be missed here. His departure has left a void 
which can not be fdled. He was true to the people, true 
to every trust, true to every friend, and true to his native 
land. He died full of honors, at the zenith of his fame, 
in the State of his adoption, in the midst of his busy life; 
lawyer and jurist, scholar and statesman, friend and 
philosopher; loved and respected and mourned by all. 
He needs no monument. The record of his useful and his 
patriotic life in the service of the people and for good 
government is a monument more enduring than marble 
and as imperishable as the pages of the history on which 
he left his indelible impress until time shall be no more. 



[82] 



Address of Mr. Cullop, of Indiana 

Mr. Speaker: David A. De Armoxd was born March 18, 
1844, and died November 23, 1909. He lived nearly the 
allotted threescore and ten. This span of years covered 
the period of a busy life, half of which was devoted to 
public service in which he won distinction but few men 
are able to attain. 

He was modest and unassuming. In the Congressional 
Directory he wrote his own biography in six and a half 
lines. In these few modest words he portrays the 65J 
years of his active, busy life, and in this unostentatious 
manner described his public services and the distinction 
he attained in the great contests covering a lifetime of 
eminent public service. 

He served in the senate of his adopted State, as judge 
on the circuit bench, as a commissioner of the supreme 
court, and was elected 10 times a Member of the National 
House of Representatives. When his great career was 
ended in November, 1909, he was then serving his nine- 
teenth consecutive year as a Member of this House, a 
period of continuous service which but few men have 
ever been able to enjoy. To have been the recipient of 
such high honors by continuous promotion at the hands 
of his constituents is in itself ample evidence of his worth 
as a public servant and conclusive proof of the confidence 
he enjoyed of those who knew him best and associated 
with him most. 

In this House he was a tower of strength, a conspicuous 
figure, and commanded the respect and high esteem of all 
its membership, irrespective of party or locality. His 

[83] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

splendid ability, valuable experience, acquired by long 
service, and his clear and accurate observation of subjects 
and events, made him a wise counselor, a desirable asso- 
ciate, and well equipped him for leadership and a most 
valuable legislator. He analyzed a subject and mastered 
every detail connected with it. He studied public ques- 
tions from the standpoint of statesmanship and measured 
their probable effect upon public policies, met and dis- 
posed of them with the courage of an honest man clothed 
with the responsibility of the execution of a public trust 
for which he must furnish an account of the service and 
answer for any unfaithful performance of the duty im- 
posed. With such a high estimate of his official duty as 
his standard, he was well qualified for the conscientious 
service he rendered in public life, for the benefit of the 
people he represented and the Nation he served. To this 
high ideal of public duty may be attributed the splendid 
record he leaves as a momnument to his memory, an 
example worthy of emulation and a legacy for posterity. 

He was not an orator in the ordinary acceptation of the 
term, but he was a convincing speaker, of unusual force, 
and a debater of rare skill and ability, a dangerous adver- 
sary in any forum and a coveted associate on any ques- 
tion. In debate he was a past master, correct in expres- 
sion, sound in thought, logical in argument, and quick at 
repartee. He measured his course in discussing a question 
apparently by the mathematical axiom that the shortest 
distance between any two given points is the straight line 
connecting them. He selected the vital point at issue 
and drove all his force upon it. This gave him great 
power in the arena of public debate and made him a 
powerful and forcible factor in any discussion in which 
he engaged. 

By virtue of his large and thorough information on sub- 
jects, his keen, accurate analysis, his quick perception, 



[8-1; 



Address ok Mr. Cullop, of Indiana 

incisive and convincing logic, firm determination, and 
biting sarcasm made him formidable in his position on 
any question and an advocate of extraordinary power. 
He brought to all the questions he championed an intel- 
lectual force and power that gave him strength before the 
public and confidence in the position he assumed. He 
studied public questions not from the standpoint of tem- 
porary expediency, but from the standpoint of permanent 
benefit to the whole people. The author of any measure 
as a panacea for all the public ills found in him an 
unfriendly companion, a reluctant coadjutor, because he 
believed in the application of well-established principles 
as the only true standard by which public questions could 
be correctly settled in legislation beneficial to the welfare 
of the whole country; as time has demonstrated, a most 
wholesome rule, and one which can not be too often 
invoked or too rigidly enforced. It was this settled dispo- 
sition, this inflexible purpose, this adherence to principle 
that gave him prominence, won for him a lasting distinc- 
tion, made him so valuable in the public service, and 
earned for him the confidence he enjoyed in his State 
and the Nation. 

He rose step by step in the public service as a reward 
for the conscientious discharge of duties well performed, 
until in this great legislative body he was one of the fore- 
most Members, a leader in national legislation, a con- 
spicuous figure in the public eye, a great factor in the 
affairs of the Nation, and gave promise of enjoying higher 
stations where he could have rendered greater service to 
the public and made greater benefactions to the Nation. 
But— 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Await alike the inevitable hour: 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 



[85] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Ahmond 

He solved the great problem of life, wrote his name on 
the pages of immortal history, and met his destiny like 
the philosopher he was. He conquered the obstacles he 
met in the pathway of life and left a glowing tribute to 
the possibilities of American manhood when endowed 
with the agencies nature bestows for the use of mankind, 
and which, when developed as required, prove the great- 
est blessing our race enjoys. He served his country to 
high purpose, and earned a valuable legacy for mankind, 
which he left as an inheritance that posterity might enjoy 
and be stimulated to greater zeal and higher purposes in 
working out the mission of life. He rose from the hum- 
ble walks of life to high position — 

The applause of listening Senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 

And read their history in a nation's eyes. 

The country was shocked at his tragical death, and 
mourns his loss, which occurred at a time when in the 
zenith of his powers, at the period of his greatest useful- 
ness, and when his country needed his services and his 
wise counsel. 

But " far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife " he 
sleeps in the soil of his adopted State the sleep that knows 
no wakening, unconscious of the busy scenes in life's 
everyday panorama among the devoted friends who ral- 
lied around his fortunes in life, who enjoyed his triumphs 
as their own, who gloried in his victories, and now mourn 
with deep grief his unfortunate death. 



[86] 



Address of Mr. Clark, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: Judge David A. De Armond, who was of 
Huguenot extraction, was born, reared, and educated in 
one of the loveliest portions of Pennsylvania, and spent 
his manhood days in the imperial Commonwealth of Mis- 
souri. By his career he added new honor to the race 
from which he sprang, to the State in which he first saw 
the light, and to the State which he represented here so 
long. 

Judge De Armond was unique in both habit and mental 
make-up. The term " sui generis," so often misapplied, 
describes him precisely. To the last he spoke as a judge 
in this House and out of it, which maimer of speech he 
had acquired by long service upon the bench. 

That he stood among the highest here and was rec- 
ognized as a force to be taken into account at all times 
and under all circumstances was a fact known to all of 
us. Why did he so rank? First, because of his native 
ability, his accurate information, his clear, incisive style 
of speaking, his fidelity to principle, and his flawless in- 
tegrity. Secondly, by reason of his long service and by 
his constant attendance on the sittings of the House. 

He died near the end of his nineteenth year in Congress. 
Of all the Missourians who have been Members of the 
House, one only exceeded him in length of service— the 
sterling and well-beloved Richard Parks Bland, who died 
in the early part of his twenty-fifth year of service, 

[87] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

possessing an international reputation. The Missourian 
next to him in point of service in the House was Gov. John 
S. Phelps, who served 18 years and rose to be chair- 
man of the Committee on Ways and Means, the first chair- 
man of that committee from the sunset side of the Great 
River. Roger Q. Mills, of Texas, is the only other trans- 
Mississippian to achieve that greatly coveted honor. The 
high places to which Phelps, Bland, and De Armond rose 
in both the House and the country is another illustration 
of the value of long service — value not only to themselves, 
but to their constituencies and to the entire Republic. 

Men should not be sent hither simply to gratify their 
own personal ambitions, but because they can be of serv- 
ice, and having proved that they are of service, wisdom 
dictates that they should be kept here so long as they con- 
tinue to be of service; and it may be confidently asserted 
that the value of the services of a man of capacity, char- 
acter, industry, and good habits increases in exact propor- 
tion to his length of service. New England understands 
this thoroughly. So do the cities of Philadelphia and 
Pittsburg. When a Representative from any of those 
places demonstrates his fitness here, he is retained until 
he retires, dies, or is promoted. Five times in succession 
Philadelphia has had the distinguished honor of furnish- 
ing the " father of the House "—Kelly, Randall, O'Neill, 
Harmer, and Bingham. Should Gen. Bingham, the pres- 
ent " father of the House," for any reason cease to be a 
Member, the title of " father of the House " would pass to 
still another Pennsylvanian, my friend the Hon. John 
Dalzell. These facts should furnish much food for 
thought to every constituency in the land. 

Judge De Armond was happy in his constituency, and 
they were fortunate in their Representative. Though 
there were many able and ambitious men in that district, 
well worthy of a seat in this Hall, the people of that dis- 



[88] 



Address or Mr. Clark, 01 Missouri 

trict would elect nobody but De Armond. Indeed, they 
gave so little encouragement to other aspirants that after 
his first election, which occurred in 1890, he never had 
opposition for the nomination. This enabled him to re- 
main here constantly while the Congress was in session 
and to devote his entire time and energies to the dis- 
charge of his onerous and multifarious duties. By rea- 
son of this wisdom on the part if his constituents, and by 
his using to the utmost the opportunities which they gave 
him, he gradually and surely became one of the most 
prominent of Representatives. 

For years he was the ranking Democrat on the great 
Judiciary Committee, for three terms was a member of 
the Committee on Rules, once came within a few votes of 
the nomination for Speaker, and was frequently men- 
tioned for the Presidency. No sane man can believe that 
he would have risen so high if he had not served so long 
and if he had been compelled to spend a large portion of 
his time in Missouri campaigning for renomination. I 
can speak on this subject with some freedom, as my own 
constituents have been very kind to me, having given me 
eight unanimous nominations, thereby enabling me to re- 
main constantly at my post of duty, for which I am deeply 
grateful. 

Judge De Armond was the most sarcastic of all the men 
who have sat in the American Congress. Tristam Burges, 
John Randolph, of Roanoke; John James Ingalls, and 
Thomas Brackett Beed made reputations in that regard 
which may outlive his; but they, in order to eke out their 
sarcasm, ransacked all literature, ancient and modern, 
sacred and profane, in both prose and poetry. De 
Armond's sarcasm was his own, evolved from his own 
inner consciousness. He never quoted history or biog- 
raphy or poetry; he did not adorn or illustrate his 
speeches with wit, humor, or anecdote; he frequently 

[89] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

made people laugh and applaud, but it was always his 
sarcasm which brought those results. He used his 
sarcasm so much that some men concluded that he was 
always in bad temper, which was not true. To those who 
knew him well there appeared to be two of him — one the 
sarcastic public speaker, who seemed to delight in carving 
his foes and sometimes his friends; the other De Armond 
in private conversation gentle, kindly, companionable. 
That his sarcasm made him enemies there can be no 
doubt, for sarcasm means flesh tearing and frequently, in- 
deed generally, leaves a festering wound. His style of 
speaking and his diffidence of manner caused folks to be- 
lieve him cold. Some of the opposition papers in Mis- 
souri called him " Frosty Dave," yet with his intimates he 
was warm-hearted, generous, and obliging. 

I believe that on the last day of his service in the House, 
in August, 1909, he was more popular than ever before. 
Whether it was because advancing years had mellowed 
him or because men had come to understand him better, 
I do not know; but I believe I have stated the truth. 

He was the greatest verbal precision in the House dur- 
ing his 19 years here. He never wrote his speeches; he 
was the only man of reputation in the House who could 
afford to let a long unwritten speech go to the printer un- 
revised without injury to his reputation. His sentences 
were like cameos. They needed no revision. When he 
first told me that never wrote his speeches I really be- 
lieved that he was indulging in that vanity which leads 
some men to claim as extemporaneous speeches which 
they had carefully written, rewritten, boiled down, pol- 
ished up, and committed to memory; but we talked about 
it so often and he told me so circumstantially how he 
came to quit writing speeches that I knew he was candid 
in his declaration that he did not write them. His ex- 
planation was that, when quite a young man, he care- 

[90] 



Address of Mr. Clark, 01 Missouri 



fully prepared an oration for delivery at some college 
commencement, I think it was; he committed it to mem- 
ory, started to deliver it, got about half through, forgot 
the rest, floundered to the end. and resolved never to re- 
peat the experiment. All this surprised me so that after 
I had concluded that he did not write his speeches 1 heard 
him with ever-increasing wonder. When he delivered 
his speech of a full hour's duration on the Philippine 
tariff hill, I sat in front of him and listened to every sylla- 
ble to see if he made a slip of the tongue or used a word 
where a synonym would improve it. He made only one 
slip, using "worser" for "worse," and corrected that on 
the instant. 

Nevertheless, let no man conclude that his speeches 
were unprepared, for none were ever more carefnlly pre- 
pared. That masterful and brilliant man, Thomas B. 
Reed, once, when disgusted by some Member's speech con- 
taining several thousand words and nothing more, said 
to me : 

No gentleman has a right to pour his undigested ideas upon a 
defenseless House. 

Whether De Armond ever heard that dictum of Mr. 
Reed I do not know; but he lived up religiously to Reed's 
idea, for certainly he never poured any undigested ideas 
upon the House. It must be confessed, however, that he 
digested them very suddenly sometimes. My own theory 
of how he prepared his speeches is this : He would sit in 
his place hours at a time, apparently contemplating the 
coats-of-arms on the ceiling, oblivious to the uproar about 
him, clipping old envelopes and scraps of paper with a 
pair of little pocket scissors. My judgment is that while 
doing that he was thinking out and preparing a speech, 
kneading it in his mind as a housewife kneads the dough, 
and when he was through with that process his speech 

[91] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

was as carefully prepared and as thoroughly fixed in his 
mind as though he had written it out word for word and 
committed it to memory. That is my theory. Tt may be 
wholly wrong, but I believe it to be entirely correct. I 
give it for what it is worth in the hope that it may be of 
some value as a hint to young speechmakers. 

Man pi'oposes, but God disposes. Originally Judge De 
Armond had no desire to come to Congress. His ambi- 
tion was for a judicial career. He had been circuit judge 
and supreme court commissioner, and desired to be judge 
of the supreme court. He made a splendid circuit judge 
and supreme court commissioner and would have ranked 
high on the supreme bench; but it was not to lie. 

In 1888 there were many capable Democrats in his con- 
gressional district, among them William Joel Stone, then 
serving his second term in the House, subsequently gov- 
ernor, and at present United States Senator; James B. 
Gantt, now chief justice of the supreme court of Missouri; 
and De Armond himself. Gantt and Stone were both 
candidates for Congress, and Stone defeated Gantt by one 
vote in the convention, thereby securing his third and last 
term in the House. De Armond was a condidate for 
supreme judge, but was defeated. Whether by agreement 
or accident I am not advised, but it so happened that in 
1890 Stone was not a candidate for any office, while Gantt 
and De Armond swapped positions, Gantt running for 
supreme judge and De Armond for Congress, and both 
succeeded. Gantt has been on the supreme bench 20 
years, and is a candidate without opposition in his own 
party for another term of 10 years. De Armond was 
elected to Congress ten times, and died in harness. 

Two or three years ago I asked him which he would 
prefer, 10 years on the supreme bench of Missouri or 10 
years more in Congress. He replied, " If I could be put 
back to 1888, I would prefer the supreme bench, but I 

[92] 



Address of Mr. Clark, of Missouri 



have boon here so long that 1 have grown used to it and 
like it, and would prefer 10 years more of Congress." 
How Judge Gantt feels about il I am not advised. 

I could easily have written a more rhetorical speech 
than this, but I chose to analyze honestly and fairly the 
sources of power of Judge De Armond as I saw and knew 
him and as I believe he would have done by me were our 
situations exchanged. His death was so sudden and so 
tragic as to shock the entire country. He now takes his 
place with the distinguished Missourians who have so 
well illustrated and adorned the history of our free and 
beneficent institutions. 



[031 



Address of Mr. Calderhead, of Kansas 

Mr. Speaker: I regard it a privilege to add a few words 
as a friend in memory of a man whose friendship I have 
enjoyed ever since I have been a Member of this House. 
I have listened with gratitude to the eloquent tributes that 
have been paid to his character and his services. He was 
all that gentlemen have said here, and then there was a 
vein in his character that will not appear when what we 
say about him is written and read. 

I came to know him in my first service in the Fifty- 
fourth Congress, chiefly because he came from the county 
with which I had some acquaintance long before he was 
there. I knew the town in which he lived when there were 
but a few bare chimneys standing over the ruins of the 
houses that had been burned away during the war. I 
knew the county when there were not half a dozen fenced 
fields in it. 

Very soon after the war came the immigration from 
Ohio, Illinois, and some other States in the North that 
went into that county, amongst them many of my father's 
friends and some schoolmates of my boyhood. My 
mother and brother sleep in a little country cemetery in 
the western boundaries of that county, in an oak grove 
that has been used as a burial ground since the first settle- 
ment of that community. I knew all the bypaths and 
roads that were opened in it and used long before he came 
there to live. I knew the character of the people that he 

[94] 



Address of Mr. Calderhead, of Kansas 

represented in Congress, and amongst those who were his 
close friends in Butler were men who were friends of 
myself when I was a barefooted schoolhoy in Ohio. 

I mention these incidents to show how easily we came 
to a personal acquaintance. Time after time we had a 
social hour together concerning them, and the years 
passed without much more than that until two years ago, 
when I was seriously ill in my hotel. He and his good 
wife occupied rooms near to mine and were so solicitous 
and careful concerning me that I came out endeared to 
them by their personal friendship and attention. After 
that many an evening the Judge and I spent together; 
sometimes in the discussion of a question that was in- 
volved in the debates of the House; sometimes in discuss- 
ing the travels on which he had journeyed, and some- 
times about incidents of my own life in the intervening 
time between the time I was in the county and the time 
when he came to it; sometimes about the questions of 
great national policy for our Government; sometimes 
upon the deeper problems of life that endeavor to pene- 
trate the veil through which he has now passed and be- 
yond which for him the great problems are solved. 

Concerning our own country, we agreed upon the fund- 
amental principles of our Government. We understood 
the Constitution of our country in substantially the same 
way. We understood the great and divine purpose of the 
life of man and the divine purpose of the life of nations 
in the same way. We derived our faith from the same 
Revealed Word and looked forward to the fulfillment of 
the same hope, trusting in the same God. 

We differed upon questions of administration and 
upon policies for the development of our country and the 
care of our people; but he always had a clear and firm 
analysis, so that sometimes I was unable to answer him 
in defense of mv own views as to what was the best 



[95] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

policy for our country and what would bring the best 
development of our Nation, and what would preserve its 
power and its strength, to bring it to full maturity, and 
make it a blessing not only to ourselves, but to the world. 

And in the end these debates which we carry on daily in 
the House serve, in a larger measure, the same purpose 
as these private conversations that I have been recounting 
to you. I think it was noticed by some one here to-day 
that Judge De Armond did not have an opportunity to put 
on record much of constructive work in the statesmanship 
with which he was so ably endowed. Yet we must remem- 
ber that under the edge of his sharp pruning many a 
measure with which our side of the House is credited has 
been trimmed down until it better fitted the common wel- 
fare of this great people, with its many diverse opinions. 

His sharp criticism, his powerful sarcasm, his keen 
analysis compelled us sometimes to yield a point here and 
a point there, until the measure that we proposed came 
nearer to fitting the needs of the people for whom we leg- 
islate. The country will not know of these services of 
his. The true historian, in a time long after this, search- 
ing for the reason why legislation did not go so far as we 
sometimes proposed, or sometimes did not go as far as 
an ardent partisan upon our side would have carried it, 
will find it was because the strong man from Missouri with 
the keen mind was measuring it, taking its dimensions, 
and laying them before the country. 

Mr. Speaker, I have not prepared a discourse concern- 
ing Judge De Armond, and my only purpose in rising is 
to add my word, as a personal Mend, to the memory of 
the great man whose friendship was an honor. 



[06] 



Address of Mr. Borland, of Missouri 

God moves in a mysterious way 

His wonders to perform; 
He plants his footstep in the sea, 

And rides upon the storm. 

The tragic death of David De Armond removed sud- 
denly from the national stage one of the strong leaders 
of his party and one upon whom the most weighty re- 
sponsibilities rested. No man could have foreseen the 
inscrutable Providence by which such a brilliant career, 
so well rounded, so tempered by the ripeness of experi- 
ence, so firmly founded upon the enduring respect and 
esteem of a great constituency, so full of promise of im- 
mediate and continual usefulness, should be brought to 
such an untimely end. 

When I entered Congress in March, 1909, I found a 
strong and influential delegation from the great State of 
Missouri, a delegation conspicuous, especially upon the 
Democratic side of the House, by the fact that it included 
within its ranks not only the minority leader of the great 
national party but also the man upon whom that leader- 
ship might well have fallen. Judge De Armond had 
served nine continuous terms in the House of Representa- 
tives, and by virtue of his clear and logical mind, his 
great industry, his inflexible fidelity to principle, and his 
comprehensive grasp of the essential principles of free 
government, had established such a marked position of 

71432— 11 7 [97] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

respect and had earned for himself so completely the 
confidence of his associates that he was in fact a leader, 
although by his own disinterested friendship and party 
zeal he had been earnest in conferring the actual leader- 
ship of the great party upon another brilliant Missourian, 
his friend and associate, the Hon. Champ Clark. 

He came to Congress well equipped for the important 
duties of a national legislator. He had been a State sena- 
tor in the General Assembly of Missouri. He had pre- 
sided as circuit judge with signal ability in the courts 
of a splendid judicial circuit. My first recollection of him 
was when as a boy I entered upon the study of law in the 
office of the general attorneys of the old Kansas City, Fort 
Scott & Gulf Railroad Co., at Kansas City. Judge De 
Armond was then a judge of a circuit through which the 
railroad ran. He was known as an able and fearless 
jurist, and he left indelibly the impression of his strong 
personality upon all with whom he came in contact. 

To his training as circuit judge he added the ripening 
experience of his service as supreme court commissioner 
of the State of Missouri. Then he was chosen by the peo- 
ple of his district their Representative in Congress. So 
singularly fortunate was the choice and so well equipped 
was he by training and temperament to represent his dis- 
trict that he was returned to each succeeding Congress. 
However fierce the political storms that swept over the 
State of Missouri, his district remained faithful to his 
leadership. His place in Congress was a rock of Gibral- 
tar upon which the ebb and flow of political tides had no 
effect. 

I have said to the people of his district, who are my 
neighbors and friends, and I repeat here, that the sixth 
district of Missouri is one of the most, if not the most, dis- 
tinctively American districts in the United States. It is 
the typical American district, animated by American 



[98] 



Address of Mr. Borland, of Missouri 



ideals, cherishing the heritage of American liberty, un- 
faltering in its allegiance to the fundamental American 
principle of equal rights and local self-government. The 
people of that district are Americans, with less intermix- 
ture of recent foreign immigration than possibly any other 
district in the United States. It is such a district which 
chose Judge De Armond as its leader and Representative, 
and well he fdled such a position. In the Congress of the 
United States he stood out conspicuously as the most 
American of Americans. 

That great body contains, as it should, typical repre- 
senatives of every section of this great Nation, men who 
express the ideals of Puritan New England, men who are 
tvpical of the chivalric knighthood of the old South, men 
who bring to us the adventurous spirit of the pioneer 
West, men who embody the commercial greatness of the 
busy marts of trade, men who have all the hopes and 
views and sympathies of the newer American citizens, 
who constantly are enriching our national life. Among 
all these men, so aptly and fittingly representing the 
varied phases of a great nation, I place Judge De Armond 
as the clear-cut type of that broad stream of Americanism 
which extends like a great golden hand from the Alle- 
ghenies across the Mississippi Valley, and which histor- 
ians have come to regard as the leavening influence which 
enters into the great undigested mass of emigration and 
turns it into an orderly body of American citizenship, 
burning with a high patriotism unknown and unknowable 
in any other land. 

The American Congress is full of strong men, men who 
by their personality, native ability, and force of character 
have made themselves conspicuous among the thousands 
of their fellow citizens who constitute a great congres- 
sional district. Among such strong men of strong person- 
alities this little giant of the sixth Missouri district 

[99; 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

towered to a conspicuous place. It was the force of his 
intellect? Yes, to a certain extent. It was the force of his 
industry and conscientious devotion to duty? That also 
is true, but was no less true of many other men. The 
thing which made De Armond great was his greatness of 
soul, which made his associates realize his inflexible 
fidelity to the American principle of equal rights. To 
him equal rights meant no less the vigorous assertion of 
his own proper claims and those of the people of his dis- 
trict than a just and kindly consideration of the rights 
of all people and all districts. He would no more en- 
croach upon the rights of others than he woidd permit 
the invasion of his own. He was scrupulously exact in 
refusing any special advantage to himself. He would not 
stultify himself by seeking undue advantages or accept- 
ing undue favors, which he knew were not consistent with 
the justice which he owed to others. This trait of his 
character was familiar to his associates and shines like 
a brilliant fixed star, in what is sometimes regarded by the 
pessimistic as a black midnight of political corruption, 
special privilege, and graft. If more public servants had 
the high courage of their convictions to refuse unearned 
favors and special privileges to themselves, there would 
be no note of pessimism in American politics. It is the 
acceptance of favors not deserved and of special privi- 
leges without adequate public compensation that consti- 
tutes the first step out of the straight and narrow path of 
honest self-government toward the bottomless pit of cor- 
ruption and graft. No man saw this more clearly or lived 
it more truly than David A. De Armond. His life is a les- 
son to all young legislators and his example should be 
heralded to the world as proof of the eternal vitality of 
the principles of self-governmeni. 

And now he is gone, leaving the indelible impress of 
his example upon our national political life, and having 



[100] 



Address of Mr. Borland, of Missouri 

written another brilliant page in the rich and varied his- 
tory of the great Commonwealth of Missouri. We cherish 

his memory and add it to our common heritage of great 
traditions, which underlie like a broad foundation the 
splendid edifice of the perpetuity of our Republic. 

The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The captains and the kings depart, 

Still stands thine ancient sacrifice 
A humble and a contrite heart; 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget! Lest we forget! 



[101 j 



Address of Mr. Morgan, of Missouri 

Mr. Speaker: In memory of a dear friend I would add 
a few words of tribute. 

David A. De Armond and I, as young men from the 
North, located in adjoining counties in southwest Missouri 
more than 40 years ago. Meeting frequently in our legal 
relations, in our Masonic gatherings, and political assem- 
blages, we became from the first intimate friends, and 
always remained so. 

He immediately made a favorable impression upon the 
community in which he dwelt. His manners were refined 
and dignified and he gave to all an impression of reserved 
force of character and intellectual strength. He took a 
lively interest in the well-being of the little town in whose 
almost rural confines his destiny was cast, not, however, 
in the commercial spirit of to-day, but in its larger growth 
of education, morals, and the civic virtues. 

At this time he was an enthusiastic Mason, and in his 
daily life and practice lived up to the best teachings of 
the order. 

As a young lawyer he was distinguished by his fidelity 
to his clients and the assiduous study of his profession, so 
that the community of Greenfield soon regarded him as 
the leader of the bar in their county and circuit. With 
the passing years his fame as a safe counselor and bril- 
liant advocate became extended and he was called to the 
bench, where, as in the active practice, his career was 

[102] 



Addrkss of Mr. Morgan, of Missouri 

marked by the same untiring industry, by profound opin- 
ions, great learning, and impartial decisions. 

He yielded reluctantly to the wishes of his personal and 
party friends and entered upon a political career. Hav- 
ing done so, however, his ability as a speaker and his 
personal popularity gave him immediate success. Mis 
powers as an organizer, orator, and defender of the Demo- 
cratic faith was recognized throughout the State. As a 
candidate his methods were honorable; his position as to 
party policies was always well known; he never indulged 
in personal abuse, nor was he ever guilty of an unfair act. 

We frequently acted together in party conventions, 
espousing the same cause, supporting the same candi- 
dates, and on several occasions were ourselves opposing 
candidates for party honors. 1 can knowingly assert his 
uniform fairness and kindness, his manly conduct under 
defeat and all freedom from the spirit of envy, and his 
gentle modesty in the hour of his triumph. 

He was tolerant of the opinions of others. He was a 
man of strong convictions, but he conceded to others what 
he reserved for himself — the right of individual opinion 
and perfect freedom of thought and action. 

You are all familiar with his career as a Representative 
in Congress. The eulogies here pronounced to-day are 
just tributes to the man, and I will not attempt to add to 
them, but content myself by saying that I regarded him as 
one of the most useful, one of the ablest and most patri- 
otic men who ever served in this body. 

Should I be called upon to name his greatest character- 
istic, I would say his love for the masses of the people 
and a desire for their welfare. 

There was never the shadow of a stain on his fair name 
nor a blemish on his public career; in his passing away 
his party lost a wise counselor and the country a faithful 
servant. 



[103] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

It was in his private life, however, that we who knew 
him hest admired and loved him most. He gave his fullest 
confidence to his intimate friends, revealing a nature 
strong, tender, steadfast, loving, generous. He was, in- 
deed, a fond father, ever solicitous for the welfare of his 
children, and to the wife of his youth, Alice Long, who still 
survives him, a devoted hushand. 

His memory will be cherished in the State he so long 
honored. 



[104] 



Address of Mr. Brantley, of Georgia 

Mr. Speaker : The question is sometimes asked why 
men of superior talents, of great industry, and of pleas- 
ing personality are willing to give the long service here 
that some of them do; a service that necessarily robs 
them, to a large extent, of the joys and happiness of a 
home life, of the society and companionship of lifetime 
friends, and in many instances denies them the income 
that their professional and business skill would yield 
if turned in the direction of producing revenue. The 
lure of applause and publicity and the fascination of the 
game of politics would probably be the answer as to some, 
while as to others it could be truly said that love of coun- 
try and a compelling desire to be of service to the toiling 
masses of mankind is the inspiring motive. 

It is popular and sometimes financially profitable 
among certain elements of our day and time to decry 
patriotism, or at least to deny its existence among those 
whom the people in their patriotic faith have placed in 
power to serve the cause of patriotism. Should such a 
belief become prevalent throughout the land, it would 
be the confession of incapacity for self-government and 
an acknowledgment that the majority of the people in 
each congressional district had not the intelligence or had 
not the honesty and the patriotism to select fit men to 
represent them, and it would mean the end of govern- 
ment by the people. Such a belief, however, is not 
generally prevalent, as is demonstrated in the high 
character and patriotic purpose of the great majority of 

[105] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

the men wbo continually find scats in this chamber, and 
the Republic lives and patriotism lives despite the rail- 
ings of the pessimists and those who would destroy the 
Government by destroying confidence in it. 

To those admitted to membership here it does not take 
long to discover that differences in home environment 
and home interests and in fixed preconceived opinions 
as to certain principles of government account for differ- 
ences in voting. The lesson that is here first learned is 
that honest differences of opinions exist, and that such 
differences do not suggest a lack of patriotism, much less 
the presence of corruption. 

The thought, however, that I intended to give utter- 
ance to was simply that there arc men here now, as there 
have been in the past and will be in the future, who are 
seriously concerned for the common weal and who freely 
give of their time and talents, to the end that government 
by the people shall endure, and men whose chief ambi- 
tion is to unfetter and uplift struggling humanity. 

Of this type was our lamented colleague, Judge De 
Armond, whose many virtues we to-day recall and exalt. 
The mention of his name leads to the further suggestion 
that one of the most, if not the most, potent charm to 
hold the average man here is the contact with the keen 
and sometimes brilliant intellects and the association with 
the many delightful personalities that are here found. 
To be privileged to enjoy an intimate personal acquaint- 
ance with Judge De Armond would be, as it has been to 
many in the past, ample compensation for many years 
of time and labor in the public service expended. His 
was a wonderful personality. He stood unique and alone 
in his class. There was no one else in it. Nobody ever 
said of some one else that he was like De Armond, and 
no one ever said that De Armond was like any other 
person. 



;i06] 



Address 01 Mr. Brantley, ok Georgia 

Throughout his entire service, covering a period of 
almost 19 years, he was one of the notable figures in 
the House. He was one of its ornaments; one who illus- 
trated in his every utterance, its dignity, ability, and 
patriotism, and did so in a style and manner peculiarly 
his own. He was not an imitator, nor was he a follower. 
He blazed his own pathway, and in his own inimitable 
fashion left an impress such as few men have left, and 
carved for himself a niche in the temple of fame, separate 
and apart from those carved by his predecessors or that 
will be carved by his successors. Others as great or 
greater than he have come and gone, and others yet will 
come and go, but his place will always be De Armond's. 

His training was judicial, and so thorough was this 
training that one would never have to be told of it, for 
it revealed itself in his every utterance. He spoke always 
with judicial authority; and, indeed, he spoke as authority 
itself, for, familiar as he was with the great precedents 
established by the courts, he never referred to a case by 
name or volume; he selected the principle established 
and asserted "it in his own language, and it came from 
him as the decree of the court itself. He never quoted, 
nor did I ever see book or paper or memorandum before 
him when he was speaking; and yet his command of 
language was so great, his flow of words so smooth and 
even, that one could listen and imagine that he was 
reading from a book prepared by some master of diction. 
But, wonderful as was his diction, it was not more so 
than the clearness and distinction of his enunciation. 
The complaint has often been made of difficulty in being 
heard in this Chamber, and yet Judge De Armond could 
be heard in every nook and corner of it, although speak- 
ing always in a conversational tone. Not only was Ins 
language that of the judge, but it was uttered in the tone 
and manner of a judicial deliverance. 

[107] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

A mere reference, however, to his manner of speaking, 
remarkable as it was, would not do him the justice that 
his great achievements deserve. He was here for many 
long years, and he was always actively and prominently 
here, taking part in all the great debates on all the great 
subjects that came up for discussion. He never entered a 
debate but to illumine it, and in his time he contributed 
much to the common store of knowledge and to the wise 
solution of many trying and disturbing problems. Men 
might sometimes, and did, disagree with the conclusions 
reached by him, but none could ever cpiestion the force 
with which he announced them or the clearness of the 
reasoning by which he reached them; and, once they 
were announced, so forcefully were they stated, they 
demanded a reply from those who opposed them. 

He was a great debater and, when aroused, was a 
foeman well to be avoided. 

There is nothing in all the realm of nature more inter- 
esting, more absorbing, or more wonderful than a well- 
adjusted, smoothly poised, brilliant human mind in rapid- 
fire action, with its full power in use. 

We sometimes marvel at the modern printing press, 
when we see the sheet of white paper enter into its grasp 
to be almost immediately discharged therefrom in the 
form of a great newspaper, printed, pasted, folded, and 
ready for the mail; but is that comparable to the wonder 
of the human mind that receives a suggestion and in an 
instant of time analyzes and digests it, frames a reply — 
crushing, absolute, and complete — and hurls it back from 
whence the suggestion came? When wit attacks wit and 
strong mind clashes with strong mind, the flashes of intel- 
lectual power that come forth thrill, uplift, and inspire 
as no mere physical performance can do. Time and 
again those of us who have been here for some time have 
witnessed all this and more when Judge De Armond, 



ins 



Address ok Mr. Brantley, of Georgia 



strongly stirred with the zeal of forensic combat, was 
pitted against a foeman worthy to challenge his great 

intellect, and time and again we have witnessed the spon- 
taneous outburst of applause that came from friend and 
foe alike as a tribute to the matchless mind with which 
he was gifted. 

It has been said of him that he was not an orator in the 
true sense, and all will agree that the conversational and 
judicial style usually adopted by him for his speeches 
bore no resemblance to oratory, and yet when be was 
aroused he could add an emphasis to his words that 
startled and aroused. But more than that, he had the 
power of word selection such as few men possess, so that 
it was not the way his words were spoken, but it was the 
words themselves that commanded and held attention. 
He had the power to attract and hold, to arouse interest 
and enthusiasm, and to sway the will of those who lis- 
tened. What more can oratory do? 

To those who knew Judge De Armond well and inti- 
mately it sounds strange to hear him pronounced cold 
and distant, because he was anything but that; and yet 
his dittidence, his retiring modesty, and his fondness for 
dwelling upon bis own thoughts made him appear at 
times to have a disposition that was utterly foreign to his 
nature. He was the most genial and kindly of men, as 
those who were his intimates so well knew. No man was 
fonder than he of exchanging thoughts and ideas in quiet 
converse with his friends, and no man enjoyed more than 
he the social friendly intercourse with his fellow-men. 
The best side of him, as the good friend, wise counsellor, 
and charming companion was in the Judiciary Commit- 
tee room, where he served for so many years, and for- 
tunate were those of us who were privileged there to 
serve with him, for there it was we learned to know him 
best and to admire him most. 



[109] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

In my judgment the qualities and powers possessed by 
him fitted him best to serve in the House with his political 
party in the minority. I never knew him when his party 
and mine was in power, but his greatest strength was 
undoubtedly in criticism and in analysis, and he was by 
no means a gentle and forbearing critic. Nature en- 
dowed him with a judicial mind, and to this natural en- 
dowment was added the training of the bench. The judge 
does not construct; he construes, he examines, analyzes, 
and compares; and those were the things Judge De 
Armond did for every measure that he took up for dis- 
cussion. It was in work of this kind that he excelled, and 
in its performance he brought to bear not only keen and 
sharp analysis, but a wealth of scorn, derision, and sar- 
casm such as no other man who served with him during 
my stay here has possessed. 

I love best to think of him, however, in his hours of 
ease and confidence, when all restraint was removed and 
he unfolded to view all those sweeter and gentler qualities 
that made him the real true man that he was. It was 
this thought of him that came to me when the news of 
his tragic and fearful death was Hashed across the wires. 
The ways of Providence are inscrutable and beyond our 
finding out, but it seems to me that the pathos and the 
tragedy of his ending has served as nothing else could do 
to reveal the fountains of love that played within him 
and to expose as perhaps would otherwise never have 
been done the serene greatness of his soul. When danger 
and death beset us, it is not all of us who can stoop to 
comfort, to succor, and to save another, and yet that is 
what he did. The faith and confidence in him of the 
little grandchild who went into fiery death with him was 
not misplaced, for although in that dreadful hour he could 
not save, he could die repeating assurances of safety to 
the end. In his death a brave spirit, a lofty soul, and 

[110J 



Address of Mr. Brantley, of Georgia 

a giant intellect passed the way of ;ill earth, and while 
we mourn and lament that he has gone, we can and do 
rejoice that he lived, and we are proud that we knew him 
and could claim him as friend. 

The Speaker pro tempore. In pursuance of the reso- 
lutions already adopted, and as a further mark of respect 
to the memory of our distinguished colleague, the House 
will now adjourn until to-morrow at 12 o'clock. 

Accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 26 minutes p. m.) the 
House adjourned. 



:ni] 



Proceedings in the Senate 

Wednesday, December 7, 1909. 

The Vice President. The Chair lays before the Senate 
resolutions from the House of Representatives, which will 
be read. 

The Secretary read the resolutions, as follows : 

House resolution 140 

Resolved, That the House of Representatives has heard with 
profound sorrow of the death of the Hon. David Albacgh De 
Armond, late a Member of the House from the State of Missouri. 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the 
Senate and send a copy thereof to the family of the deceased. 

Mr. Stone. Mr. President, the tragic and pathetic death 
of Representative De Armond, of Missouri, attracted 
world-wide attention. His death is deeply lamented in 
my State and is everywhere regarded as a national loss. 
I present resolutions suitable to the occasion, for which 
I ask present consideration. 

The resolutions (S. Res. 88) were read and considered 
by unanimous consent, as follows: 

Senate resolution 88 

Resolved, That the Senate has heard with deep sensibility the 
announcement of the death of Hon. David Albaugh De Armond, 
late a Representative from the State of Missouri. 

Resolved, That the Secretary communicate a copy of these 
resolutions to the House of Representatives and to the family 
of the deceased. 



112] 



Proceedings in the Senate 



Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of 
the deceased, the Senate do now adjourn. 

The Vice President. The question is on the adoption 
of the first two resolutions. 

The resolutions were unanimously agreed to. 

Mr. Stone. Mr. President, at a later and appropriate 
date I will ask the Senate to set aside a day on which 
suitable tributes may he paid to the memory of the 
deceased. 

April 3, 1910. 

Mr. Stone. Mr. President, I desire to announce that 
on Saturday, May 11, after the routine morning business, 
I shall ask the Senate to consider resolutions commemo- 
rative of the life and services of David A. De Armond, 
late a Member of the House of Representatives from the 
State of Missouri. 

May 12, 1910. 

Mr. Stone. I will ask that by unanimous con- 

sent the order may be entered that on Saturday, May 21, 
immediately after the reading of the Journal, resolutions 
and eulogies commemorative of the death of Representa- 
tive Cushman, of Washington, shall be first in order, 
according to the notice already given, and that immedi- 
ately thereafter like ceremonies shall be had with respect 
to the late Representative De Armonb, of Missouri. 

Saturday, May 2/. 1910. 

The Chaplain, Rev. Ulysses G. B. Pierce, D. D., offered 
the following prayer: 

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for this day of ten- 
der recollections, when those who have labored by our 
side and have shared our councils live again in memory, 
we thank Thee, whom the living and the dead evermore 
praise. 

71432°— 11 8 [H3] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

Sanctify to us, we pray Thee, the exercises of this day, 
and unite our hearts and our lives with those who, having 
fought the good fight, having kept the faith, and having 
finished their course, have received the crown of right- 
eousness, and have laid hold of life eternal. 

And unto Thee, who art our God and our Savior, who 
callest us into Thine everlasting kingdom, will we ascribe 
glory and praise, now and for evermore. Amen. 

The Vice President. The Chair lays before the Sen- 
ate resolutions of the House of Representatives, which 
will be read. 

The Secretary read the resolutions, as follows: 

House resolution 580 

Resolved, That the business of the House be now suspended, 
that opportunity may be given for tributes to the memory of 
Hon. David Albacgh De Armond, late a Member of this House 
from the State of Missouri. 

Resolved, That as a particular mark of respect to the memory 
of the deceased, and in recognition of his distinguished public 
career, the House at the conclusion of these exercises shall stand 
adjourned. 

Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the 
Senate. 

Resolved, That the Clerk send a copy of these resolutions to 
the family of the deceased. 

Mr. Stone. Mr. President, I present the resolutions 
which I send to the desk, and ask for their adoption. 

The Vice President. The resolutions submitted by the 
Senator from Missouri will be read. 

The resolutions were read, considered by unanimous 
consent, and unanimously agreed to, as follows: 

Senate resolution 2-10 

Resolved, That the Senate has heard with deep sorrow of the 
death of Hon. David A. De Armond. late a Member of the House 
of Representatives from the State of Missouri. 

fill 



Proceedings in the Senate 



Resolved, That as a mark of respecl to the memory of the 
deceased, the business <>f the Senate be suspended in order that 
proper tribute may be paid his high character and distinguished 

public services. 

Resolved. That the Secretary communicate a copy of these 
resolutions to the House of Representatives and to the family 
of the deceased. 



[115] 



MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 



Address of Mr. Stone, of Missouri 

Mr. President: David A. De Armond was a native of 
Pennsylvania. He was born on the 18th of March, 1844, 
and died on the 23d of November, 1909. His life covered 
a span of 65 years, 8 months, and 5 days. He was 
descended from Revolutionary stock, his grandfather, 
Michael De Armond, having been a soldier under Wash- 
ington in the war for independence, and participated 
in numerous engagements during the progress of that 
eventful struggle. The years of Mr. De Armond's child- 
hood and earlier manhood were passed for the most 
part on the farm of his father in the foothills of the 
Alleghany Mountains. He was educated in the common 
and high schools of his native county of Blair, and at 
Dickinson's Seminary, located at Williamsport, Pa., from 
which institution he graduated in 1866. After that he 
moved to Davenport, Iowa, where he resided .for about 
two years, studying law, which profession he had deter- 
mined upon. Subsequently he moved to the town of 
Greenfield, Dade County, Mo., lying on the border of the 
Ozark Mountains. He was a studious and thoughtful 
man, and being endowed by nature with superior intel- 
lectual powers, he rose rapidly in his profession and soon 
occupied a high place at the bar. In 1878 he was elected 
as a Democrat to the State senate for a term of four 

[110] 



Address of Mr. Stone, of Missouri 



years. In that body, as a sagacious and patriotic legis- 
lator, he took rank among the foremost, and exercised an 
influence for good of so decided a character that when 
he left the senate he had acquired a reputation which 
placed him among the conspicuous men of the State. 

Not long after his term as senator expired he moved 
from Dade to Bates County, where he continued to reside 
until his death. In 1885, under the authority of a legis- 
lative act, the judges of the supreme court of the State 
appointed him as a supreme court commissioner to aid 
that court in clearing its overburdened docket. During 
his incumbency of this commissionership he was for most 
practical purposes a member of the court. He heard ar- 
guments, examined cases, and handed down opinions. 
Numerous opinions written by Mr. De Armond are to be 
found in the reports of the court. His selection for this 
exceptionally responsible station was a great compliment, 
and his conscientious and able discharge of his duties 
justified the wisdom of those who appointed him. 

In 1886 Mr. De Armond was elected judge of the judicial 
circuit which embraced the county of his residence. He 
succeeded Judge James B. Gantt, who was elected to the 
supreme bench, and upon which he has now held a seat 
for more than two decades, and who for more than a 
quarter of a century has been regarded as one of the 
ablest and most learned of Missouri lawyers. Mr. De 
Armond occupied the circuit bench for a period of about 
four years, or until 1890, when he was nominated and 
elected as a Democrat to the House of Bepresentatives 
for the term beginning on the 4th day of March, 1891. 
This position of Bepresentative in Congress from the 
sixth district of Missouri he retained from the day of his 
first induction into the office until the day of his death, 
covering a period of 18 years, 8 months, and 19 days. 
He was serving his tenth consecutive term when the 



[117] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

tragedy occurred which terminated his life. He was 
therefore in point of service one of the oldest and most 
experienced, as he was undoubtedly one of the most dis- 
tinguished, Members of the House holding a seat in that 
body at the opening of the present, or Sixty-first, Con- 
gress. So much I say biographically. 

I knew Judge De Armond for nearly 40 years. About 
the time he settled at Greenfield I settled at Nevada, the 
county seat of Vernon County. The two counties almost 
adjoined. For more than 40 years these counties have 
been in the same judicial circuit, and for many years 
were in the same congressional district. After Judge 
De Armond moved to Bates we lived in adjoining counties. 
We practiced law in the same courts, met often in politi- 
cal conventions and other public meetings, and on fre- 
quent social occasions. Before he came to Congress I 
represented for several terms a district which embraced 
all the counties, save one, of the district he represented 
during his service here. So it may be said, in a sense, 
that we grew up together. I can speak, therefore, with 
knowledge of the man. 

Of him, as a citizen, it may be truly said that he gave 
his countenance and aid to all things calculated to pro- 
mote the well-being of the community in which he lived, 
and that he himself lived a clean and manly life. 

Of him, as a lawyer, it may be said that he was studious 
and learned, devoted to clients whose cause he espoused, 
and capable of meeting the best without fear. In fact, 
fear was no part of the man. 

Of him, as a State senator, I have already spoken, but 
will add that no man ever served his State in that capac- 
ity with greater devotion or with a finer sense of duty, 
and rarely, if ever, with better ability to acceptably 
discharge the important functions he had assumed. 



118] 



Address of Mr. Stone, oi Missoi ki 



Of him, ;is judge, whether on the circuit or supreme 
bench, it may be said that he- displayed a great aptitude 
for judicial administration. He had a profound rever- 
ence for an able and incorruptible judiciary. He pos- 
sessed in marked degree the elements necessary to make 
a wise and just judge. He performed his judicial duties 
in a way that commanded universal respect, and when, 
from choice, he laid the ermine aside all said he had 
left it with honor and without stain. 

Of him, as a Representative in Congress, it may he said, 
first, that his constituency believed in him and was loyal 
to him — and that speaks for very much — and, secondly, 
and still more to the point, that that confidence and 
loyalty was justified. Why not? He was faithful, honest, 
and capable. Whenever a public man rises to that Jeffer- 
sonian test he can do no more; and De Akmond did that. 
In this age of detraction and muckraking — I will not say 
exceptional age, for it is not exceptional — there is some 
consolation and even inspiration in the thought that wc 
often find, as in this instance, that the sober judg- 
ment of the people, however widely scattered, gives due 
credit to the motives of men and to the things they do. 
Mr. De Armond rose by force of intellect and devotion 
to duty to a high place in the House. He did not shoot up 
like a rocket, and it is well he did not. A rocket in its 
quick upward flight leaves a trail of light behind, and 
when it reaches its highest possible point of ascent it 
bursts into a blaze of glory and falls. The trail of light 
which marks its pathway and the stars it scatters in the 
sky soon fade and are forgotten. It is the man who rises 
steadily and on merit who leaves a lasting impression on 
the life of a great people. Real achievement— achieve- 
ments worth remembering, and which accomplish results 
of a permanent nature — come usually, if not always, to 
men who toil for years with adequate opportunity for 



11!) 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

service. De Armond had that opportunity, coupled with 
the ability to use it, and so he has left his permanent 
impress on the generation in which he lived. Long will 
he be remembered, not only as one of the great men of 
Missouri, but as one of the great representatives of the 
American people. 

His death was tragic and pathetic. Not only are the 
Senate and House familiar with the incident, but the 
world is familiar with it. It is needless to recount it. 
After that night of horror when he died the sun rose to 
look down upon thousands of sad hearts and tearful eyes 
in the beautiful little city where he lived. Not only in But- 
ler, where De Armond's home once stood, as hundreds of 
others, in the midst of shade trees and flowers, was the 
overhanging shadow of a great grief, but throughout his 
district and State, and throughout the country, there was 
one universal note of profound and sincere lament. I am 
sure every Member of the Senate joins with genuine sym- 
pathy in this simple but solemn service, commemorative 
of Missouri's illustrious dead. 



120] 



Address of Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa 

Mr. President: When Congress originally adopted the 
custom of setting apart a day free from other public 
business to commemorate the life and public service of 
those dying while Members of the House or of the Sen- 
ate, it was a comparatively simple and solemn ceremony, 
because the Members of the two Houses were very few 
compared to our own time and because the business of 
the Congress was very small compared to the pressure 
and hurry of these latter years. 

The House of Representatives has adopted a very sig- 
nificant innovation in holding these ceremonies near to 
the time of the death of a Member in the afternoon of 
the Sabbath day, with the surroundings of flowers and 
music appropriate to such an hour, giving to the whole 
ceremony a dignity and a beauty which is impossible 
in the haste of the secular week. I do not know that the 
innovation will ever make its way into this Chamber, 
but I express the hope and the belief that the Senate will 
at some near day consider, at least, the wisdom and 
propriety of that change in its rules. 

Tins afternoon we have been called upon to commemo- 
rate the public services of two men, both of whom held 
a position of unusual distinction in our public life, and 
whose eminence and long service in the House of Repre- 
sentatives are in themselves authentic passports to a per- 
manent celebrity in the parliamentary history of our 



[121 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

country. Curiously enough both of them, in the days of 
their youth, were identified in the life of the State which 
I have the honor in part to represent. 

Mr. Cushman was born among our people, and the early 
battles of his life were fought out there; his ambitions 
were shaped thei-e; and to the day of his death he looked 
back to the State as his old homestead and numbered the 
pioneers of Iowa among his friends and his constituents. 

Judge De Armond was born in Pennsylvania, on the 
banks of the Juniata River, just beneath the Allegheny 
Mountains, where they give such splendor of scenery to 
that portion of the State of Pennsylvania. He was one of 
a family of many children, and, of course, every one of 
them had to contribute to the maintenance and to the 
comfort of the household. His early educational advan- 
tages, while not very great, were not altogether usual 
in that hill country of Pennsylvania. Immediately after 
the war his family moved to the State of Iowa, where he 
studied law in the office of Lane & Day, then the head- 
quarters of a great professional influence in Iowa. 

His brother is now a senator from Scott County, Iowa, 
in our general assembly, famous, useful, and honored 
without regard to political party. And so our people have 
felt, since Judge De Armond began his public career, his 
professional life, among them, that they have had a sort 
of interest in the increasing reputation which he won on 
his removal to the State of Missouri and in the fine pub- 
lic service which he rendered during 20 years in the 
House of Representatives. 

I regard a service like that in the House, accompanied 
by prompt and continued recognition by its member- 
ship, as probably a man's best title to consideration as 
possessing those qualifications that give him leadership 
among his fellow men. It is no small business to get 
elected to Congress by an enlightened constituency. It is 

[122" 



Address ob Mr. Dolliver, of low 



an extraordinary tribute to a man to be chosen consecu- 
tively 10 times without dissent in a great congressional 
district to represent the same people. 

There have been men serving 20 years in the House of 
Representatives who wire able to win only one-half of 
this distinction, able to retain the good will of their neigh- 
bors and their constituents, though they occupied a very 
small place in the real business of the House of Repre- 
sentatives. 

Judge De Armond has the double credentials of render- 
ing a service so satisfactory to his people that for 20 
years they continued him in that great office, and # of 
rendering a service in the House itself so distinguished 
among his fellows, so lifted up above the average service 
rendered there, that from the time - of his appearance in 
the House be was marked as a leader and a factor more 
and more potent in framing the policies of his party and 
in the business of the House. 

No severer test is laid upon men in this world than 
the test that falls upon men who enter the House of 
Representatives. It is a place without reverence for dis- 
tinction won elsewhere; it is a place without sympathy 
for the infirmities which men sometimes mistake for 
strength; it is a place where no man is listened to unless 
he has something to say; where no man is given any 
recognition except upon the merits of the transaction in 
which he is engaged. I have often thought, and more 
than once said, that if a man can secure the approbation 
of the House of Representatives, if he can make himself 
so heard there that he commands its attention at all 
times, that his counsel is accepted, that his wisdom is 
valued, such a man has the highest possible title to fame 
in the public service of the people of the United States. 

Judge De Armond was so violent a partisan that when 
he came into the Fifty-second Congress all of us who 



[123; 



Memobial Addbesses: Repbesentati.ye De Abmond 

differed with him in political faith and in views of life 
and public duty acquired almost instinctively a certain 
prejudice against him. He was bftter and unrelenting 
in his partisan expressions, as we thought, and yet from 
the day he came there everybody recognized that a new 
intellectual force had come into the House. He became a 
great debater, if he was not such before he entered the 
House of Representatives. I do not think it can be said 
that he was a great orator in the sense that he was able 
to employ any of the artifices of rhetoric. He was a 
great debater in the sense that he was always ready to 
speak, always familiar with his subject, and that he 
spoke without manuscript. I believe it is said of him 
that he seldom wrote a speech; that he started out writing 
his speeches, but repeated failures to remember them at 
the critical moment during his address early convinced 
him that he was not calculated for that form of eloquence. 
So, from his youth he cultivated the art of extempo- 
raneous discourse, the speaker's only art of any possible 
value in a tumultuous assembly like the House of Repre- 
sentatives. 

He was a debater in the sense that he not only had at 
command knowledge and exact information, but he had 
also some of the finest intellectual weapons that are 
needed in a warfare of that kind. During my public 
service I have known only two men to be at all compared 
to Judge De Abmond in the power of drawing the broad- 
sword of attack and of using the light arms of defense in 
the running debates of the House of Representatives. 

I think it may be said that the late Senator Ingalls 
was of a kindred quality of mind. The late Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, Thomas B. Reed, who over- 
topped all men in his generation in the ready use of the 
deadly weapons of speech, was his superior. But, with 
those two exceptions, I know of nobody in either House in 

[124] 



Address or Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa 



the last 20 years to be compared with .Indue Dr. Armond 
in that peculiar epigrammatic power of expression which 
made him at once feared and respected by Ins oppo- 
nents on every occasion of controversy in the House of 
Representatives. 

He had the training of a country lawyer, and in reading 
his speeches it will at once he observed thai the logical 
faculty was the faculty which he had most cultivated and 
upon which he most relied. He was at home in coherent 
argument upon a question before the House, lie was a 
profound student of the law, as will be verified by those 
familiar with his service upon the Judiciary Committee 
of the House. He had a scope of legal knowledge almost 
extinct in these latter years, because our methods of 
studying law have altogether changed within the present 
generation. 

Our law schools are now turning out some three to 
five thousand young men every year, a sort of tidal wave 
of energy and enthusiasm and ambition, against which 
the public is already putting itself on the defensive. I 
doubt very much whether these law schools — even our 
best law schools — equip men as in past generations they 
were equipped in the work of a busy law office. The old 
lawyers were all men trained in the law office itself. 
and I believe much of the success of Judge De Armond 
was owing to the fact that it was his fortune to fall under 
the influence of great lawyers engaged in active practice, 
and that in after years he had the time to give his atten- 
tion to the larger questions coming before him in the 
labors of his profession. 

I have come to the conclusion that the great lawyers 
of to-day are not in the large cities, where the offices 
are opened late in the morning and locked in the middle 
of the afternoon, for purposes of recreation in the sub- 
urban air. We have within the last few years seen a 



[125 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

country lawyer coming from the little city of Rochester, 
in Minnesota, unheralded and unknown, go to the city of 
New York to represent the Government of the United 
States in a case of vast importance, confounding the most 
famous advocates and the most skillful attorneys by the 
unexpected grasp of his knowledge and by that energy 
which comes from accurate information, giving him a 
success where everybody would naturally have said that 
he would have failed. 

There is growing up in the United States a school of 
lawyers, trained in the practice of the profession, who 
are to do for the American people in this generation what 
the great lawyers of other generations have done for this 
and other lands. 

The liberties and the rights of the people of all coun- 
tries have been established by the fidelity and genius of 
the legal profession. The history of English liberty is 
the biography of a long list of great lawyers, running 
back to the very sources of the common law; and there 
is uot a nation in Europe which does not number among 
the founders of its civil institutions and the defenders of 
popular rights advocates who have illustrated the larger 
life which the profession of the law ought to give to its 
votaries. 

The practice of the law is a public service. Every 
attorney is an officer of the court and literally in the serv- 
ice of the community. One of the sad and discouraging 
features of our own time is that great professional repu- 
tations have been won, not in serving the people, not in 
fortifying public rights, not in defending the public wel- 
fare, but in advising others how to evade our laws and 
trample under foot the policies which the lawmaking 
power has established for the development of our insti- 
tutions. 



;i2C] 



Address of Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa 



I am looking to the country law offices to send out in 
these days men trained not only in the knowledge of the 
law hut in that higher training, the moral responsibility 
of the lawyer for the welfare of society, so thai we shall 
see more men like Judge De ARMOND putting aside the 
financial rewards of the profession for the chance to 
render their countrymen a lasting service. 

All of our governments — municipal. State, and na- 
tional — stand in need of more men educated in the prac- 
tice of this great profession, men who in the courts shall 
make our Department of Justice a terror for evil doers 
and put cities and counties and States and the Govern- 
ment of the United States itself upon terms of equality 
with those against whom they conduct litigation in the 
skill and energy with which the case of the people is 
presented to the courts of the country. 

Judge De Armond, in my humble opinion, illustrated 
a high type of the American lawyer, trained in his pro- 
fession and faithful to the duties of the calling which he 
had adopted. He will be remembered a long time in the 
House of Representatives. Those who first looked upon 
him with prejudice, and, as in my own ease, with a certain 
hostility, because I had more than one bitter altercation 
with him, had those feelings transformed by a better 
knowledge of his character, until even the shafts of sar- 
casm and wit, with which he was accustomed to attack 
all comers, seemed less malignant and less damaging, 
and men of both parties came to love him and to respect 
him and to honor him for his talents and for his fidelity 
in the public service. 

That feeling, 1 need not add, was magnified when those 
who knew him well read in the newspapers of the tragedy 
which ended his service and his life. I can not forbear 
adding that the horror of that tragedy, to my mind, was 
relieved by the fact that after a life singularly devoted 

[127] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

to others, he ended with a touch of that heroism which 
gives real glory to human nature. A chance gleam of 
light, a quiet spoken word, reveals him in his last act, 
offering himself for the safety and welfare of those whom 
he loved. I can not think that it is altogether a tragedy 
which thus exhibits a simple sacrifice of self, that makes 
the life of man at once sublime and infinite. We do not 
understand either the meaning of our brief probation 
or the end which comes to all. I have never for a moment 
doubted that at the time appointed there will appear a 
light which will illuminate every mystery, and, for the 
contradictions and uncertainties of the life that now is, 
give us the everlasting certainties of the life which is to 
come. 



[128] 



Address of Mr. Curtis, 01 Kansas 

Mr. President: The Hon. David A. De Armond, whose 
memory we have met to-day to commemorate, was born 
in Blair County, Pa., March 18, 1844. He was reared on a 
farm, educated in the common schools and at Williams- 
port Dickinson Seminary. 

It was my good fortune to meet Judge De Armond very 
soon after I became a Member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives in the Fifty-third Congress, and I became well 
acquainted with him. The longer I knew him the more 
I discovered and esteemed his ability and lovable disposi- 
tion. Although he was not of my parly, yet from our first 
meeting I admired him for the chivalry and gentleness of 
his nature. It was while on the trip to the Philippines 
with the Taft party, in 1905, that 1 learned the details of 
his private life. He was a splendid companion, always 
considerate of the feelings of others and the comfort of 
those with whom he associated. He cared not for the 
material riches of the world; his greatest desire was to 
aid and advance the constituency he had the honor to 
represent, and his controlling sentiment was for what he 
believed to be their welfare and interest. As a State sen- 
ator, a commissioner of the supreme court of Missouri, 
and for nearly 20 years a Member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, he was preeminently a man to accomplish 
things. He was thoroughly known to his people, and he 
had at all times their unlimited confidence and affection. 
They conferred upon him honor after honor, and he 



71432 —11- 



:i29] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

discharged his duties with the utmost fidelity. It was his 
judicial career which brought him before the people in a 
way that suggested his peculiar fitness for legislative 
work, and all of us who had the pleasure of knowing him 
can truthfully say that while a Member of the House he 
was much interested in his work and devoted himself to 
it with singleness of purpose and intelligent diligence. 
His ability as a debater, his great fund of information on 
public cpiestions, and his knowledge of parliamentary 
procedure well fitted, him to be one of the leaders of his 
party, and those of us who did not agree with him politi- 
cally admired his splendid ability and often listened to 
his wonderful presentation of weighty questions with 
admiration. His sudden and untimely death was indeed 
a distinct loss, not only to his constituents and State, but 
to the country as a whole. Surely the memory of his 
beautiful character and tender kindness will be to us a 
priceless recollection. The State of Missouri has lost a 
faithful and distinguished son; and all of us who knew 
him, a loyal and loving friend. 



130] 



Address or Mr. Hughes, of Colorado 

Mr. President: I recognize that in speaking upon the 
life, the equipment, the achievements of Judge De 
Armond, I lack that intimate knowledge, that close asso- 
ciation which are necessary to add aught to what has been 
and will he said by others. I recognize that there has 
been and will be said here to-day, as there has been said 
elsewhere, the words which present a perfect picture of 
his mental power, of his experience, his skill, the high 
position he won for himself in the public life of America; 
and in that knowledge I might have found an excuse 
which I would have been justified in urging against my 
attempting to speak of him here. 

But, Mr. President, mingled with the affection which 
every American feels for the great Republic, there is a 
tender, an almost sacred regard for the State of our 
birth and the State of our residence. Statesmen have 
known, weighed, and utilized this universal sentiment. 
While it is now many years since, animated by the spirit 
which has animated those who have founded and builded 
the new States of America, I left the State of my birth to 
find a new home in the distant West, there has been no 
hour since that departure in which I have not cherished a 
fond affection for it, and a glowing pride in her marvelous 
progress and in the achievements and accomplishments 
of her great men. 

So it was that I accepted this opportunity of saying 
but a word of appreciation in memory of this dead states- 
man because of my birth in the State which he delib- 
erately chose as his home. 

[131] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 



While I had the good fortune to know Judge De 
Armond before he became conspicuous in public life, 
the acquaintance was necessarily a slight one; but later, 
when he passed to the bench and thence into the wider 
field of public life as a Representative in Congress, I soon 
learned that which he impressed upon the House of Rep- 
resentatives — that he possessed one of the clear, strong, 
vigorous minds of this Republic. 

Something has been said here to-day in the character- 
ization of the men whom we arc honoring concerning the 
demand that is made by the business life of the country 
upon its ability and its talent, thus withdrawing into 
other fields of effort many of the strong men of our coun- 
try, who give to business and professional life the brain 
and force the country needs. Judge De Armond, equipped 
with powers which would have brought him success in 
professional life, which would have brought him great 
fortune if he had devoted himself to that professional 
life, cherished an even loftier ambition in that he de- 
voted himself and his strength of intellect and all his 
great abilities to the service of the public — of his country. 

He was willing that the heritage he should leave should 
be the record of his public achievements, and it is a 
heritage than which none could be richer. He came nec- 
essarily an unheralded man into public life here, but it 
was not long before the body in which he served, before 
the people of the country, came to know that a new 
force had entered into the political life of America, and 
that another great mind was dealing with the subjects 
of public discussion, with the perplexing problems which 
must be dealt with in legislation. 

His intellect was sunlight, clear and penetrating. His 
power of expression was capable of presenting with 
directness and precision the thoughts which were so clear 
to his own mind. 



[132] 



Address of Mr. Hughes, oi Colorad 



This made him a powerful advocate, .1 dangerous an- 
tagonist in debate, a tower of strength to the principles 
which he advocated and to the party to which he be- 
longed. It was not long, therefore, before Judge De 
Armond was recognized by party friends and by political 
opponents to be one of the leaders in the House of Rep- 
resentatives. He earned that distinction; he maintained 
it. There was no slackening in his efforts, no falling 
off in his ability, no failure to meet the expectations of 
friends or to more than realize the apprehensions of 
those opposed to him. 

lie became by his discussion of public questions an 
element and a strong factor in their determination. His 
labors have been an important part of the legislation 
of this Republic for 20 years, and have become his 
enduring monument. 

He came here from a State which was already dis- 
tinguished in these Halls. Both in the House of Repre- 
sentatives and in this Chamber there has been no day 
since that State was admitted into the Union when it 
has not attracted attention to its representatives by their 
ability, their eloquence, and their efficient devotion to 
public interests. 

Judge De Armond, though not born in the State which 
he represented, fully entered into the spirit which has 
characterized it, led to its marvelous growth and inspir- 
ing progress, and splendidly he represented those attri- 
butes which are its individual distinction. He had not 
more than begun in their fruitfulness to enjoy the results 
of his continued and arduous labors when his tragic tak- 
ing off startled the American public. It was a sad and 
unexpected and wasteful termination of a great and use- 
ful life. This untimely ending, this quenching of the 
fires of his intellectual energy, could only bring sorrow 
alike to friends and opponents, for whether we agreed 



[133; 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armoxd 

with him or differed from him all recognized that he 
brought to the discussion of every great subject some- 
thing new, something of force, something of clear analy- 
sis, which tended to a better comprehension of the real 
matters of dispute or inquiry. 

Our public life, with its strength and wealth of endow- 
ment, could ill afford this loss. A great State needed 
him longer, as did the Republic, and the great party to 
whose principles he was devoted and which he ever 
loyally urged and valiantly fended. Knowing his cjuali- 
ties, recognizing his ability, belonging to the party whose 
tenets he maintained, I have sorrowed with those who 
mourn his loss and grieved that the great State of Mis- 
souri should have been deprived thus sadly of the services 
of one of her most distinguished sons. 



[134] 



Address of Mr. Smith, of Michigan 

Mr. President: During my public service I have had 
the pleasure of serving with upward of 2,000 Representa- 
tives and Senators in the Congress of the United Stales. 
I recall in that experience many large and splendid figures 
who have with special luster dignified the public service, 
but I think I can truthfully say that no more deserving, 
high-minded, honorable, or able man among the entire 
2,000 could be found than the late Representative from 
the State of Missouri. 

Democrat though he was, sitting on the other side of 
the Chamber, I learned to love his generosity, his public 
spirit, his breadth of character, and his sympathy with his 
fellow-men. In fact, Mr. President, partisanship finds 
very little expression in the personal relations of public 
men who come to know one another well, and I can truth- 
fully testify that I have been aided and assisted in the per- 
formance of my public duties as often by men with whom 
I was in disagreement politically as with those of my own 
faith. 

Judge De Armond was one of the ablest, most incisive, 
clean-cut debaters I have ever known, a lawyer profound 
and fundamental, one who grasped the principles of the 
law, and who was able to apply the infoi'mation at his 
command with telling effect. A man naturally modest, 
shrinking, and backward, almost to shyness, if he ever 
entered the field of forensic discussion he seemed to do 
so because it was his duty, because he appreciated the 

[135] 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

responsibility of his position and felt that it was neces- 
sary to give voice to his convictions. 

I am very happy in the memory which comes back to 
me to-day of my association with Judge De Armond. I 
think he left a profound impression upon all his asso- 
ciates. Everyone respected him and many cheerfully 
and willingly followed him .in his matchless parliamen- 
tary leadership. 

The tragic manner of his death and the quiet and un- 
pretentious life that he lived tell the simple story of 
exalted American citizenship. 

While I am well aware that I have not done full justice 
to his memory, because of the pressure of other matters 
which have prevented the attention it rightfully deserves. 
yet, Mr. President, I cheerfully and gladly pay my tribute 
of respect and honor to one who reflected credit upon his 
State and his country, and in whose death the American 
people have lost a most valuable and desirable asset. 



[136] 



Address of Mr. Shively, of Indiana 

Mr. President: I first met David A. De Armond when he 
entered on his service in the House of Representatives 

in the Fifty-second Congress. In that Congress Judge 
De Armond was associated with many of the strong char- 
acters in the legislative history of the country. There 
were Holman, of Indiana; Reed, of Maine; Henderson, of 
Iowa; Crisp and Turner, of Georgia; Springer, of Illinois; 
Hatch, of Missouri; the scholarly and courtly Wilson, of 
West Virginia; and a further galaxy of talent still living 
and winning new laurels in public life and private sta- 
tion. Among these men, from the early days of his serv- 
ice in the House, Judge De Armond took a commanding 
position. Keen of intellect, studious from habit, always 
master of his suhjeet, incisive in speech, he from the first 
compelled the attention of the House and easily won its 
confidence and respect. His was preeminently the judi- 
cial mind. In debate he was cool and dispassionate. He 
was gifted with the rare power of lucid statement. The 
crystal clearness of his presentation of the facts of a ques- 
tion was more convincing than elaborate argument by 
men without this useful faculty and special talent. He 
went directly to the suhstance of his theme, and em- 
ployed no elaborate artifices of speech to illustrate and 
enforce his meaning. 

Judge De Armond was an ardent Democrat. He was 
inflexible in his adherence to certain principles of gov- 
ernment. He was in no sense narrow or intolerant, but 

[137. 



Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

was quick, earnest, and effective in defense of the views 
for which lie stood. He was no party slave; he was 
incapable of mere party idolatry. 

But he regarded the party relation as an honorable 
relation, and the true party spirit as promotive of civic 
energy and emulation in the best in government. He was 
capable in parliamentary controversy of disconcerting 
ridicule and drastic sarcasm, but only resorted to these 
in the presence of what he believed to be false pretense 
and palpable pharisaism. Whether in attack or defense, 
he was aggressive. There was no confusion of ideas. 
Over all of his parliamentary work is a glow of cold bril- 
liance that speaks the clearness of his mental vision. 

Indeed, one of his charms as a public man was the clear- 
ness, precision, and defmiteness of his views on public 
epiestions. He was a thorough student of the fundamen- 
tals of government. Knowing the general cast of his 
mind, it was easy to say in advance what his position 
would be on a given question. He was so anchored to 
certain general principles that special questions presented 
to him none of the difficulties that beset the drifting 
doubter or anxious opportunist. He found in well-settled 
principles the key to the solution of vexed problems, and 
in the solidity of his convictions he was a safe and com- 
forting counselor in times of uncertainty or apprehension. 

In his social qualities Judge De Armond was amiable 
and attractive. He was sincere, but never effusive in 
manner. He scorned to flatter another, and was free 
from vanity himself. He was gentle with the gentleness 
of the strong man. His sense of justice was acute and his 
sympathies active. His ideals of public duty were high, 
anil his devotion to the interests of his constituents con- 
stant and unremitting. The announcement of his death 
came to all of us who had served with him as a shock. 



:138] 



Address of Mr. Shively, of Indiana 



The manner and incidents of his death were unspeakably 

sad. Whether in his case the words wore true 

Thou steal'st away my breath, Life's purpose unfulfilled — 
This is thy sting, O Death! 

I know not. I only know that he was devoted to his 
country, faithful to his trusts, sincere in all his relations 
with his fellowmen. and suddenly taken from us in the 
prime of his faculties and the plenitude of his usefulness. 
Death has bereft us of his presence. Death can not he- 
reave his family, friends, or country of the high service 
he rendered nor of the tender memories which his manly 
personality inspired. 



[139] 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 

Mr. President: The poverty of our language forbids 
the expression of our deepest feeling, our tenderest emo- 
tions, or our best thoughts on an occasion like this. On 
the desk of every Senator is found two programs of 
memorial exercises for the day — the one, Hon. Francis 
W. Cushman, late a Representative from the State of 
Washington, and the other, Hon. David A. De Armond, 
late a Representative from the State of Missouri. 

These two memories might well be considered together. 
While they represented districts far remote from each 
other and were of different schools of political thought, 
they were known in the House of Representatives as able, 
devoted, and loyal representatives of their respective 
districts and parties. * 

De Armond was a disciple of Jefferson. Cushman im- 
plicitly believed in the doctrines of Hamilton. They dis- 
agreed upon fundamental principles and theories of gov- 
ernment. Their disagreements were honest and each 
respected the convictions of the other. They embraced 
within the scope of their respective party views all of 
the essential features relating to government in theory 
and practice. Retween them issues were never clouded. 

In Congress and on the rostrum throughout the coun- 
try each spoke in clear and ringing tones for the faith 
that was in him and the right as he conceived it to be. 

They dealt with principles and policies on lines of logic 
and with an earnestness born of patriotism and devotion 

[140] 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 



to duty. No two public nun of our times writ' more 
thoroughly representative of the two theories of gov- 
ernment which have prevailed in this country from the 
foundation of our system. 

Their broad conceptions embraced and disposed of all 
the ephemeral issues seized upon by smaller minds 
as temporary rallying points tor party organisms and 
activities. 

According to their method all important issues could 
be fairly presented to the electors and decided in accord- 
ance with the judgment of the majority, leaving the 
disposition of the great mass of public business exempt 
from partisan disputes and subject only to constitutional 
limitations and just consideration for the public welfare. 

In the keeping of either of these men the interests of a 
district were safe, and the destinies of the whole Nation 
might have been, with perfect confidence, committed to 
either of them. 

As long as free government endures political parties 
will exist because they supply the machinery through 
which issues are framed and presented for the decision 
of the ruling power — the body of the people. 

The demagogue triumphs for an hour, a day, or a year 
by espousing the popular side of a subordinate issue 
involving passing passion, prejudice, or fallacy; but the 
public man who is devoted to elementary principles will 
successfully combat the fancy of the hour, the day, or 
the year, serenely confident of ultimate success, because 
of his faith in the eternal triumph of righteousness and 
justice. De Armond and Cushman would each have faced 
the mob, would each have encountered defeat and pre- 
ferred it while standing for the political faith in which 
he believed. Through such men political issues are 
squarely tried, because they go to trial on the issue, 
despising resorts to evasion or expediency. The dema- 



[141] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

gogue is dangerous because he seeks to inflame rather 
than to correct the excesses of passion. The statesman 
justifies his claim to enduring fame by standing as a 
rallying point for correct but discredited principles in 
times of turmoil and excitement. It matters not that 
De Armond stood for extreme conservatism and Cush- 
man for the aggressive, progressive, and daring spirit of 
the age. Each stood for something definite, and the 
people could always locate these two central ideas by the 
position taken by these two men, who adhered with un- 
varying loyalty to their respective standards. By nature 
De Armond was in favor of slow and cautious movement. 
He revered ancient traditions and resisted innovation, 
just as Cushman believed in the age in which he lived as 
the best of all the ages, and, so believing, was willing to 
create new precedents by moving forward with unlimited 
confidence into new and unexplored regions. In a sense 
the one was pessimistic and doubtful of the present and 
the future, while the other was optimistic and confidently 
believed in the doctrine of evolution. 

The lives of De Armond and Cushman will endure as a 
standing refutation of the oft-repeated assertion that a 
century and a quarter of experience leaves our country 
under our system bereft of opportunity for struggling 
men. 

They reached distinction through different parties — ■ 
parties directly opposed to each other. The avenues for 
advancement from obscurity were found to be open to 
these struggling men in each of the great parties arrayed 
along political lines, precisely as to the vision of normal 
men the avenues of advancement are open to-day more 
widely than ever before for worthy and struggling men in 
every field of endeavor in this country. 

In our day the word of encouragement and the helping 
hand are reached out in all parties and in all avenues of 

[142] 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 



life to the honest, the ambitious, and the industrious. 
This has been so from the beginning, and our political life 
furnishes the most abundant evidence of the fact. The 
only man who is handicapped in the political affairs of 
this country to-day — the only man who was handicapped 
in the days of Washington and Jackson and Lincoln — is 
he who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, horn 
with the handicap of wealth and station to be overcome. 
The boy from the log cabin on the frontier finds a god- 
speed and a welcome everywhere. The features of the 
life of Abraham Lincoln around which our affections 
cluster most fondly now are the features which were iden- 
tified with obscurity and suffering and trial. So it is with 
the biography of every man who has figured prominently 
in the history of our country. 

The American people constitute a separate and inde- 
pendent race, a composite race made up of contributions 
from all the world outside. Probably we represent the 
best development of the Aryan race the world has known, 
or ever will know, because no such theater remains for 
assembling the elements as this virgin continent presented 
four centuries ago. Character building has been in prog- 
ress in all the States and communities of this country 
from the beginning, and whatever may be said of the 
power, the wealth, the pomp and circumstance of place, 
the fact is now as it has ever been in this country of ours, 
that character, integrity, and unselfish devotion to duty 
are at a higher premium in the United States than those 
qualities have ever attained in the estimation of mankind 
anywhere else. 

The biographies of these two distinguished men, who 
lately departed this life, as Representatives, one from 
Missouri and the other from Washington, are instructive, 
and to the youth of this country, Mr. President, they are 
inspiring. The autobiography of David A. De Armond, 

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Memorial Addresses: Representative De Armond 

of Missouri, was written up as approved by him in just 
six lines. He had reached a high place in Congress. He 
was regarded as one of the invincible debaters in that 
remarkable forum, the House of Representatives. He had 
few equals and no superiors there. Yet this modest man, 
responding to the call from the printer, wrote all that 
he cared to write about himself in just six lines, and the 
two opening lines read as follows: 

David Albaugh De Armond. Democrat, of Butler, was born in 
Blair County, Pa.; March IS, 1844: was brought up on a farm: edu- 
cated in the common schools. 

In a few brief lines on page 132 of the same edition of 
the Directory appears this brief statement: 

Francis W. Cushman, Bepublican, of Tacoma, was born May 8, 
1867, at Brighton, Washington County, Iowa; was educated chiefly 
at the high school in Brighton, and at the Pleasant Plain Academy, 
of Jefferson County, Iowa; he assisted himself in securing an edu- 
cation by working as a " water boy " on the railroad in the summer 
lime and attending school in the winter time; after the comple- 
tion of his school course he worked for a time as a common 
laborer or "section hand" on the railroad; at the age of 16 he 
moved to the then Territory of Wyoming, where he remained for 
five years working as a cowboy on a ranch, in a lumber camp 
teaching school, and studying law. 

I will not go through the Directory, but let any young 
man who desires to be informed of the experience and 
the beginnings of Senators and Representatives read this 
little book with its many short biographies and he will 
find in every one of these, from the beginning to the end, 
the very reassuring fact that the Representatives of the 
States and the people of the United States in the popular 
branch of Congress have, as a rule, just such stories to tell. 
While the two Houses of Congress are made up of men 
who came up from the farms and the factories, with 
thi' accumulated experience and the sympathetic touch 

11441 



Address of Mr. Carter, of Montana 



of all the intervening phases of life, the Government as 
established by our fathers and maintained by those who 
have preceded us will he secure, and the principles upon 
which it rests will be preserved, whether administered by 
the party of De Armond following the lines of Jefferson- 
ianism, Democracy, or the party of Cushman adhering 
to the doctrines of Hamilton. 

What lias been said of one of these worthy men may 
well be said of the other. Both were honest. They had 
the confidence of their constituents and maintained that 
confidence because they deserved it. 

It is difficult for a man in public life in this country to 
maintain the confidence of a constituency. Detraction 
has become so common, the desire to destroy reputation 
and impute evil motives so current, that a man must of 
necessity be entirely worthy of the confidence of a con- 
stituency in order long to maintain it. 

I knew both these Representatives, and knew them well. 
In private life they were models. In public life they 
might well be emulated. In social life, Mr. President, 
they were far apart. 

Cushman will be remembered in the city of Washing- 
ton after many, many of us have been forgotten, because 
of the marvelous humor which enabled him to enliven 
the social gatherings where he was not only welcomed but 
eagerly sought. I think in the quarter of a century 
through which the great Gridiron Club has passed in re- 
view — a mighty galaxy of gifted men — no one is remem- 
bered or will be remembered with greater enthusiasm 
and appreciation than the splendid young man, the 
angular, the genial, the straightforward, the honest 
Representative from the State of Washington — Francis 
W. Cushman. 

De Armond was cut off in the middle of his career, so, 
likewise, was Cushman. The hand of death reached both 



71432-11 10 [145] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

these men as they were rushing up with rapid strides to 
the undiscerned summit of a great career. They lived to 
good purpose, and their memories will remain as an in- 
spiration for all time to come. 

In their lives, devoted to duty, the Nation finds a legacy 
of rare and priceless value. The bereaved homes in Mis- 
souri and on the distant shores of Puget Sound can find 
little consolation in what may be said here, for, after all, a 
Congress can offer little solace to a wounded heart; its 
expressions at best are cold and formal, but the blameless 
life consecrated to duty begets a memory which may in 
some measure compensate for an otherwise irreparable 
loss. 

Mr. Stone. Mr. President, I desire to state that the Sen- 
ator from Mississippi [Mr. Money], who had intimate 
knowledge of and held affectionate relations with Judge 
De Armond during his service here at the Capitol, had in- 
tended to be present and pay his tribute to the deceased, 
but he sends me word that the illness with which he is 
afflicted makes it physically impossible for him to be 
present to-day. 



[146] 



Address of Mr. Warner, of Missouri 

Mr. President: It had not been my purpose to make 
any remarks upon this occasion, but I do not feel like per- 
mitting these exercises to close without paying a tribute 
to the memory of one of the most distinguished citizens of 
my' State. I am here to bear witness that David A. De 
Armond was true to every demand of good citizenship. 
As a lawyer he was loyal to his clients, as a judge he was 
just and fearless, and as a statesman he was intellectually 
honest. In debate he was a master, neither asking for 
nor giving quarter. 

His success came to him by reason of his untiring in- 
dustry and incorruptible integrity. His life was a strug- 
gle; his death was a tragedy. In the full power of his 
manhood and in the zenith of his usefulness he passed 
away. I am constrained to believe that when called upon 
to cross the invisible and shadowy line separating time 
from eternity, pressing his little grandson to his bosom 
amid the flames, he passed over, " seeing nothing here to 
regret or there to fear." In life the grandfather and the 
grandson were companions; in death they were not 
parted. 

Mr. President, skeptical as we may be, when we stand ' 
in the presence of our dead there comes to our aching 
hearts an affirmative answer to the question of the ages, 
" If a man die, shall he live again? " 

Mr. President, I submit the resolution which I send to 
the desk, and ask for its adoption. 

[147] 



Memorial Addresses : Representative De Armond 

The Presiding Officer (Mr. Curtis in the chair). The 
Secretary will read the resolution submitted by the Sen- 
ator from Missouri. 

The Secretary read the resolution, as follows: 

Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of 
Francis W. Cushman and David A. De Armond, the distinguished 
deceased Representatives, the Senate do now adjourn. 

The Presiding Officer. The question is on agreeing to 
the resolution submitted by the Senator from Missouri. 

The resolution was unanimously agreed to; and (at 3 
o'clock and 43 minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned until 
Monday, May 23, 1910, at 12 o'clock meridian. 



0§i 



[148] 



